SRE Now into Cocodiesel and Clean-burning Stove

In keeping with its mandate to explore more productive uses of renewable energy - particularly, biomass - SRE has expanded its core activities to include (1) the production and testing of coconut methyl ester (CME), or cocodiesel, in stationary engines, and (2) the commercial production of the Mayon Turbo Stove, a household cooking stove that uses rice hulls for fuel.

The CME will be used in a one percent (1%) blend with regular diesel in operating the 75 HP diesel-fuel decorticator at SRE's Ibajay Coco Coir Processing plant. Aklan State University's Chemical Laboratory is collaborating with SRE in the production of CME. The stock coconut oil used is sourced from the mini oilmill owned and operated by the Ibajay Small Coconut Farmers Development Cooperative (ISCFDC), SRE's partners in the coco coir processing enterprise.

In collaboration with another partner, Resource Efficient Agriculture Production (REAP Canada), SRE helped to design and fabricate the Mayon Turbo Stove (The Poor Man's Gas Stove) which is fuelled by raw rice hulls. It is cheap, efficient, clean-burning, and can be fabricated locally.

With the new ventures, SRE's "stable" now features: (1) coco coir processing; (2) multi-purpose dryer fuelled by rice hulls and other agricultural waste; (3) virgin coconut oil; (4) cocodiesel, and (5) Mayon Turbo Stove. SRE was also the first foreign entity to run field tests of the first two prototypes of the BioMax, a biomass gasifier fuelled by raw coconut shells that generated 15HP of electricity. The BioMax is manufactured by Colorado-based Community Power Corporation (www.gocpc.com), one of SRE's partners.

Still in the pipeline is converting COCONUT DUST into organic fertilizer and mulch for high-value crops, a joint endeavor of SRE and Sagana 100, a leading manufacturer of organic fertilizer in the Philippines. With countries such as Germany now banning the use of peat moss and mandating, instead, the use of coconut dust peat (cocopeat), the worldwide market for yet another byproduct of the tree of life is expected to grow.