Coconut Crude | Ethan Zuckerman A Newly Electric Green – Sustainable Energy, Resources and Design see all posts in this category Price of gasoline got you down? If you're driving a diesel vehicle in the South Pacific, you may be in luck. Vanuatan entrepreneur Tony Deamer has adapted his fleet of rental cars to run on coconut oil , a plentiful local commodity. Unlike with many biofuels, coconut oil doens't need to be transesterized - mixed with sodium hydroxide and alcohol to change its chemical composition - to run in a diesel engine. Filtered and warmed to temperatures about 25C, coconut oil is a better than satisfactory substitute for "mineral diesel" - it burns more slowly, which produces more even pressure on engine pistons, reducing engine wear, and lubricates the engine more effectively. Deamer runs most of his vehicles on a mixture of 85% coconut oil and 15% kerosene , but has demonstrated that modified diesel engines run filtered coconut oil quite ha...
life, from my point of view :)