Dear Marc, Many thanks for your useful information. As I wrote to Kirk, my intention is to use as much as possible of the coir and shells for matting and activated charcoal production. That leaves the fermentation of the water (juice). I would certainly be happy for us to co-operate on researching and develoing a viable process. Will be returning to PNG some time (not yet fixed) next month and I will not be able to start anything practical till then. So I suggest we keep in touch.
In the meantime I wonder if you are able to supply me with links or attachments containing descriptions, specificatios and other general details of fairly low tech mechanical expellers similar to that developed by Dr. Dan Etherington (but not so expensive). Since ht idea is for this process to be carried out by village communities. If you do not know about this here is Dan Etherington's web site http://www.kokonutpacific.com.au/ . Also see below. Best Regards, Hanns -----Original Message----- From: F. Marc de Piolenc [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, 21 May 2001 1:22 PM To: Biofuel List Subject: [biofuel] Coconut oil Dear Hanns et al., The separation of coconut oil from coco milk (the water should be separated out before oil extraction, as it contains no oil) using heat is generally abandoned here due to low extraction efficiency and high energy use. I do not, unfortunately, have numbers, as the analyses and proposals I have on file are based on the use of mechanical expellers. As I have said before, high energy consumption is not necessarily a showstopper, as the availability of that energy (in both the thermodynamic and economic senses) is just as important as quantity. That is, if you can use coir and shells as your heat sources (if you have no more profitable outlets for those), then perhaps it can be made to work. As for fermenting the residue, the traditional end product of coco water is coco vinegar - wine vinegar is virtually unknown here. But I believe that acetic fermentation requires prior ethanol fermentation, so presumably there is some way to design a process that eliminates the acetobacter part of the vinegar process. Perhaps heating to the point where the residue is sterile, then (after cooling) inoculating with beer yeast and excluding air...? **As you say, there has to be prior alcohol fermentation. Perhaps it's just a question of stopping the dermentation at the correct point? Looks like another bench-scale experiment is in the offing. Maybe we could design an experimental program and split the work? Were you planning to start with green coconuts or mature coconuts? **Mature coconuts because they contain more oil and are already on the ground. Best, Marc de Piolenc Iligan, Lanao del Norte (Mindanao) Philippines Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
