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Diesel from a palm tree

08.07.2011

The Finns have built the world's largest plant for processing palm oil into diesel fuel in Singapore.

Oil is pressed from the pulp of the fruits of the oil palm and from their seeds. Plum-sized fruits hang in clusters weighing 40-50 kilograms. Approximately 7250 liters of oil are obtained per hectare of plantation. It is used in Africa (where this type of palm comes from) and in Southeast Asia for cooking, although palm oil has been reported to increase blood cholesterol levels.

Countries within 25 degrees of latitude of the equator produce about 40 million tons of palm oil each year, about a third of the world's production of all edible vegetable fats. The Singapore plant will annually produce 800 thousand tons of diesel fuel, capable of completely replacing the same fuel from oil (the total production of biodiesel in the world is now 2 million tons).

The production is based on a new process, the details of which were not disclosed. To get a ton of biodiesel, you need to process 1,23 tons of oil, a by-product is combustible gas. Raw materials come mainly from nearby Malaysia. Palm oil diesel produces 45% less soot and 20% less nitrogen oxides in engine exhaust than conventional diesel.

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In our world, each elementary particle has a pair corresponding to it in all parameters, except for the opposite electric charge. If an ordinary particle and an antiparticle collide in space, they cancel each other out, turning into pure energy. Naturally, such a property of antimatter makes it difficult to obtain, store and study it. In 2010, CERN scientists were able to magnetically trap and study antimatter, even though the storage time for antimatter was only a fraction of a second. But the very next year, the retention time of antimatter in a trap was increased to 16 minutes.

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