When most of the vehicles are in queue at fuel stations, BA 1 Cha 6355 is never seen at any of such lines. It instead plies snugly on the road every day.The deepening fuel crisis in the country has hit it less because it runs on biodiesel produced from the waste oil of a restaurant in Bauddha. The G-Café has been utilizing hundreds of liters of such waste oil nattily to produce biodiesel for its vehicle.
Vishwa Maskey, who owns both the vehicle and the restaurant, shared that he is proud to have been able to use the modern technology and utilize the waste oil of his restaurant.
"I am driving my biodiesel van without hassle at a time when the country is facing fuel crisis," said Maskey. "Experimenting with the waste oil to produce biodiesel didn't require me to be an expert."
He shared that he learned the biodiesel technology through the Discovery Channel and experimented with the process several times before producing biodiesel from the waste oil.
Maskey uses a filter purchased from China at a cost of Rs 100,000 to filter the waste oil from fried doughnut and mixes it with fossil fuel.
"I use 20 percent of biodiesel and mix it with 80 percent of diesel to run my vehicle," he informed.
He also shared that he has been delivering restaurant food to people's doors in his vehicle despite the Indian fuel blockade.
Stating that he initiated such an eco friendly technology to give society a message, he suggested that the new generation, mainly youths, should learn and apply such technologies in resource-scarce country like Nepal.
"Most of the big restaurants in Kathmandu don't discard any residue oil. Instead they add fresh oil to it or sell it to street food vendors. If we have a center to collect waste oil from all restaurants and hotels, we don't need to completely depend on fossil fuel to run our vehicles irrespective of the nature of the vehicle's engine," Maskey opined.
He has been running his bio diesel vehicle for the last six years and has tote it up more than 50,000 km. He said that the type of bio diesel he produces is fit for engines like DI and TDI.
Biodiesel can be produced from biological sources such as jatropha seeds, coconut, castor seeds, palm oil, algae, sunflower seeds, soybean oil and mustard seeds among others.
Maskey, a high school dropout, informed that he is even working on biomass burners for his restaurant kitchen.
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