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Muscat: If a Sohar-based Omani entrepreneur has his way, then by 2010 the sultanate could become the first Arab country to produce an economically viable alternative to petrol.
Mohammad Bin Saif Al Harthy and his family are successfully using ethanol produced from biomass for the last 18 months to run their cars in Sohar.
"Our experiment of using ethanol in our cars has been successful. We have had no problems so far," enthused Al Harthy in an interview with Gulf News.
The production of fuel ethanol from renewable resources as an economically viable alternative to gasoline is currently the subject of much research.
Brazil experiment
And, countries like Brazil already have widespread use of ethanol, produced from biomass, as an alternative fuel for automobiles.
"The bio-fuel is doing well in Brazil and in some states of the US and we want to be the first Arab countries to start using fuel produced from date palms," said Al Harthy, adding that they would not be cutting trees to produce bio-fuel.
"Our method is different and doesn't affect the date crop or environment," he revealed. He said they would be extracting cellulose biomass from around 80,000 date palms.
"We do have date palms in large number in the country and our strategic plans is to grow more then 10 millions trees, within next 10 years in the area and we have a good support from the authority," he said, adding that date palm trees don't consume much water and easily grow in the country.
He confessed that production of ethanol from date palm tree has never been tried out. "Our experiment, however, has been successful," he stressed.
Producing biofuel
Now, Al Harthy has also got a licence to set up a bio-refinery in Sohar, the northern town in Oman that has become a hub of petrochemical industries.
"Our aim is not only to produce biofuel at the refinery in Sohar but also to set up around 100 biofuel stations around the country by 2010," he said. They intend to produce 900,000 metric tonnes of ethanol per year.
For that Al Harthy and his partners at the Oman Green Energy Company are also hoping to raise 55 million Omani riyals (Dh524.67 million) capital from investing European countries.
Talking about the experiment of running his own car on biofuel, Al Harthy said: "All small cars can run on biofuel without any problems and it is much cheaper compared to conventional petrol and also helpful for our environment," he said.
Al Harthy also said that the prime target would be automobile users but they would also supply ethanol to power stations such the one being planned in Dubai.
He claimed that Oman would be the first country in the world neither to cut trees nor to use waste, chip wood to extract cellulose ethanol.
"We plan to use the enzyme that we have developed to extract the bio-mass from palm trees," he said, admitting that they are also seeking collaborations with some of the laboratories in the West.
After 2010, Oman may have cars running on bio-fuel with emissions from automobiles posing lesser threat to the environment.
Production by 2010
- An Omani entrepreneur plans to start producing biofuel and marketing the same by 2010 through biofuel stations across the country.
- The biofuel refinery, to be set up in Sohar, will have a capacity of 4.8 million tonnes within four years, the first two years the capacity will be 900,000 million tonnes annually.
- Ethanol, used as biofuel, is produced by fermentation of glucose, to be derived from date palm in Oman, by yeast.
- The biofuel project is expected to create more jobs for Omanis, employing over 3,500 Omanis in the first five years.
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