Special Feature
This is a video report about
World Business: A couple of
years ago, with surging
demand for biofuel from
Europe and riding crude oil
prices, investors rushed to
build plants to turn palm oil
into biodiesel. But with
falling oil prices and
changing opinions towards
biofuel many of those
projects were put on hold.
To adapt, biofuel producers
now have to be a little more
creative.
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History
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" The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time. "
Rudolf Diesel 1912 |
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The history of converting vegetable oils into fuels could be dated back to 1895, when Dr. Rudolf Diesel (1858 - 1913) developed the first engine that run on vegetable oils. Subsequently, Diesel filed for a patent at the Imperial Patent Office in Germany on February 27, 1892, and started experimenting and building working models of his engines.
To further promote his visionary creation, Disel demonstrated his engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898 and described an experiment using peanut oil as fuel (the "original" biodiesel) in this engine. |
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As a result of Diesel's invention, compression engines were powered by a vegetable oil, until the 1920's and are being powered again, nowadays, by biodiesel. |
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