United Arab Emirates University extracts date seed oil to make biofuels

The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) has successfully extracted the largest quantity of date seeds’ oil for the biofuel industry as a part of a qualitative research project.

The two-year project was completed with a cost of  AED 1 million. 

Ninety per cent of the date seeds waste after oil extraction is used in the pyrolysis process, the research found. This helps in using 100 per cent of the date seeds for producing fuels like hydrogen and methane.

Dr Emad Eldeen Elnajjar, an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the College of Engineering and a chair of the Research Team the goal is to examine the possibility of a principal use of the largest possible amount of oils resulting from date seeds in the biofuel industry.

"There are more than 40 million palm trees in the UAE that annually approximately produce one million tons of date seeds, 10 per cent can be extracted as oils, so we have 100,000 tons of oils that can be converted into biofuels. The waste about 900,000 tons can be used in gaseous pyrolysis, and the final waste is used in other applications, particularly agriculture as fertilizer,” he added.