A Vietnamese company plans to turn catfish fat into biofuel to run diesel engines, with industrial-scale production set to start next year, an official of the firm said Tuesday.
Catfish exporter Agifish said it had won government approval to build a factory in the southern Mekong delta province of An Giang in 2007 and produce about 10-million litres of the fuel per year.
”We have carried out tests since 2004 in laboratories in Ho Chi Minh City, and they have shown that the catfish biofuel is very good,” said Ho Xuan Thien, chief engineer of the company’s technical department.
”We have received the green light from the government to commercialise the fuel from 2007 and build a plant to process 10 000 tons of catfish a year. The fuel will be used for diesel engines in the domestic market.”
Thien said the company had found a way to make about one litre of biofuel from one kilogram of fat and oil from the whiskered sweet-water fish, and had already used the fuel to run pumps in its fish farms.
Vietnam plans to produce about 500 000 tons of catfish this year and 700 000 tons in 2007, mostly for export to the United States and Europe, said Thien.
Vietnam, which booked 8,4% economic growth last year, has major offshore oil and gas reserves but lacks refineries, making it reliant on petroleum imports and vulnerable to global oil price fluctuations.
Meanwhile, biofuel researchers at the Centre for Petrochemical Technology in the former Saigon plan to mix waste cooking oil with diesel to make a cheaper fuel, the state-run Vietnam News Agency reported on Tuesday.
In the two-year pilot project, used cooking oil will be collected from restaurants, hotels and food factories in Vietnam’s largest city, also reducing the amount of pollution in streams and rivers, the report said. — AFP
