Malawi Conducts Research on Use of Ethanol By Motor Vehicles

Malawi is conducting the third phase of research into the use of ethanol as an alternative source of motor fuel in the country due to increasing high costs of petroleum fuel which is entirely imported.

Director of Science and Technology Henry Mbedza told journalists in Lilongwe that the research program was aimed at reducing the importation of the fossil fuel from other countries which is increasing every year, not only in volume, buy in costs as well.

The importation of petrol has stagnated at between 80 to 90 million liters per year and a combined import bill with diesel, which is increasing in both import volume and price every year, is around US$120 million per year.

According to the director, an old vehicle for research purposes was made available for testing through a series of experiments and was discovered that the engine temperature was normal.

“The results showed that it was possible to use 100 per cent ethanol to drive petrol vehicles in the country,” he added.

The director, however, disclosed that the project is still ongoing as the research team will continue to generate data on the engine performance of the ethanol driven vehicle in order to make better comparison with petrol driven vehicles.

The data should assist the researchers in the cost benefit analysis exercise as the team further gathers data on the performance of a flexible vehicle and build a capacity for Malawians to maintain ethanol driven or flexible vehicles (which use either ethanol or petrol).

He added that the current production level of ethanol in Malawi is 7.0 million litres from the Ethanol Company Limited (ETHCO) and 10.8 million liters from Prescane.

But the two factories have a design capacity of producing 16 million liters each annually, he said.

Source African Press Agency

Net News Publisher