Following the pilot programme introduced in February 2013, B10 biodiesel is expected to be fully implemented nationwide by October this year, Bernama reports, with plantation industries and commodities (MPIC) minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas saying the arrival of B10 will lift domestic consumption of crude palm oil by one million tonnes per year.
"The meetings with the stakeholders (planters) will be concluded by end-June and we will also finalise the papers on the implementation for submission to the Cabinet by then," he told the national news agency.
B10, a blend of 10% palm-based biodiesel and 90% petroleum diesel, is set to replace B5, which has been in place since November 2011. The pilot programme saw all of MPIC's 81 diesel vehicles use 25 tonnes of B10 biodiesel annually. Its upcoming launch indicates that MPIC, SIRIM and the Standards department have established a new B10 standard, replacing B5's MS123:2005.
Diesel passenger vehicles usually have a maximum B7 rating written on the fuel cap, so the move to 10% inadvertently leads to questions about adverse effects on diesel engine vehicles.
The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) has said before that according to studies, B10 will not affect diesel vehicles negatively - MPIC's vehicles have after all been test-running B10 all this while.
At the time, we were told by a car company that the 10% in B10 is too small to have any significant effect, and that its tests show its cars to work fine up to B13. It also said that the reason B7 is written on the fuel cap is that biodiesel only goes up to B7 in most overseas markets.
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