Coconut oil as an energy source?

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 1, 2009 | by Lee Benson Deseret News

You've probably heard the one about the guillotine not working during the French Revolution, so they decided they would have to cancel the executions.

But next in line to have his head chopped off was an engineer who put his head on the block and looked up at the contraption.

"Oh," he said, "I see the problem."

Fixing stuff, it's what engineers do, and there was no better evidence of that than the 12th annual Design Day held this past Wednesday at the University of Utah, where seniors in the Department of Mechanical Engineering displayed various contraptions, inventions and innovations they'd hatched out of their young, fertile minds.

A lot of it I didn't understand -- electrorheological fluids? Underground thermal energy storage? DNA amplification? -- but a project I did understand was one titled "Human Powered Oil Extraction Process."

On display was a machine that consisted of two bicycle pedals attached to a horizontal pole with spikes on the end and a coconut on each spike.

Rob Haws described in scientific jargon how to operate the machine: "One guy sits and turns the pedals with his feet while two guys on each side hold the coconuts in place."

Haws is one of a team of five U. engineering students -- Taft Arnold, Ross Lindhorst, Blake Seifers and Kevin Louder are the others -- who got together to design the apparatus that can turn coconuts into energy and solve a power crisis in the South Pacific islands of Vanuatu.

And as an added incentive, also get them graduated next month.

The need for the coconut machine was supplied a year ago by a Swedish doctor named Hank Meuzelaar, who works for a humanitarian organization called Medical Assistance to Remote Communities (MARC).

Dr. Meuzelaar had been to Vanuatu, where he encountered two things in abundance: an abject lack of an affordable, consistent energy source and an amazing number of coconuts.

The Republic of Vanuatu consists of 220,000 people who inhabit a collection of 82 islands in the South Pacific. Calling them remote is an understatement. Australia is 1,000 miles to the west. Peru is 7,000 miles to the east. (Viewers of the reality television show "Survivor" may recall the location for Season 9: "Vanuatu - Islands of Fire").

For Vanuatuans, immigration is not a problem, but fuel is. The islanders primarily use kerosene to light their homes and as a cooking source. But not only is kerosene polluting and dangerous, it is also hard to get.

Dr. Meuzelaar wondered if some smart engineers might be able to turn oil from the coconuts into homespun fuel and solve everyone's problems.

He called Dr. Robert Roemer at the U. mechanical engineering department, who in turn threw out the challenge to the above-named team members.

The budding engineers, all of them Utahns who have never set foot in the South Seas, dove into their project, first envisioning the process in their minds, then actually constructing the machine.

Finally they bought a bunch of coconuts and tried it out. First they used the pedal power (imagine riding a recumbent bike with coconuts attached to the hub) to grind down the coconuts. Then they pressed the coconut meat with a log press they built. That produced three byproducts in a jar: water, protein material and oil, which settled at the top.

It takes about 75 coconuts to produce a gallon of oil. In an eight-hour shift, they estimate the machine is capable of refining about 420 coconuts and producing nearly six gallons of oil -- and giving everyone pushing the pedals a good workout.

Every family in Vanuatu ought to have one -- and the best part is that they're reliable and cheap. There's nothing to plug in, no gears to wreck, and the materials cost about $300. (MARC will probably donate the machines.)

And yes, they're painted Ute red.

No one on Team Vanuatu knows for sure if their coconut machine will get them an A, but Ross Lindhorst spoke for everyone when he said, "What would be cool is if they'd invite us to go over there and set 'em up."

Engineers. Always thinking.

Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com