Filtered coco oil electrifies Jomalig Island

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Coco-nut Authority(PCA) Administrator Oscar G. Garin said Barangay Apad in Jomalig Island is now enjoying electricity as a result of suc-cessful experiments pioneered by PCA during the time of former Adminis-trator Jesus Paras on the use of filtered coconut oil (FCCNO) as biofuel in statio-nary and mobile engines.

Garin said a FCCNO plant with one metric ton copra capacity was inau-gurated in the island recently while the 25-kva genset set up by project partner Department of Ener-gy through the Que-zon Electric Coope-rative (Quezelco) was switched on. Another partner is the Asian and Paci-fic Coconut Commu-nity (APCC), an in-tergovernmental organization with 15 member countries . This pilot project now provides elec-tricity to 47 consu-mers out of the tar-geted 56 households.

PCA product de-velopment depart-ment (PDD) mana-ger Dina Masa who supervised the agen-cy’s experiments said Jomalig Island was chosen as pro-ject site since copra price in the place is cheap which makes the production cost of FCCNO also cheap.

She explained that to make the pro-cessing plant’s ope-ration financially feasible, the copra price in the locality or island communi-ty should at least be P20/kg or lower and the diesel price P40/liter or higher.

Garin added that the production of FCCNO will contri-bute significantly to making the island self-reliant since coconut is abundant in the place. Coconut Media Service