Malaysia Looks to Jatropha for Biodiesel

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

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Malaysia Looks to Jatropha for Biodiesel

KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian government is looking to use jatropha oil for production of biodiesel in the future, Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui said.

According to Bernama, this plan is still at the research and development stage and it has not reached the commercialisation stage yet, he said.

Chin said the biodiesel projects in Malaysia at the moment were based on the use of oil palm as the raw material.

He explained that the production of biodiesel from waste materials including from oil palm was still at the early stage of research and development.

The initial research has shown that the production of biodiesel from waste materials was still very high and not viable yet for commercialisation.

On the current state of the country's biodiesel projects, Chin said about 91 percent of the projects had been approved with a total production capacity of 10.2 million tonnes a year.

From this amount, a total of 12 biodiesel plants have been fully completed and are in operation with a production capacity of one million tonnes a year.

Another two biodiesel plants have been also completed but they are yet to start operations. The production capacity of these two plants will be 160,000 tonnes a year, Chin said.

In March this year, the cost of producing oil palm based biodiesel was RM4,330 per tonne compared with the market price of RM3,632 per tonne for the fuel.

Therefore, a big number of biodiesel producers have temporarily stopped producing biodiesel as the increased cost of production has negatively impacted their profit margin and the viability of the country's biodiesel industry, he said.

View the Bernama story by clicking here.