Italian farmers have built the world first motorboat powered by sunflower oil as a concrete demonstration of how "biofuels" can be a viable alternative to polluting fossil fuels, according to Italian media on Wednesday.

Presented to the world by Italian farmers' union Coldiretti, the boat was seen cruising the waters of Lake Como in northern Italy recently during an international conference on food and agriculture in the town of Cernobbio.

Coldiretti said it costs only about 1,000 euros to adapt a normal diesel-powered motorboat, inserting an alternative fuel tank and a switch to allow the driver to choose which fuel to use.

According to Coldiretti Chairman Paolo Bedoni, the same sort of mechanism could easily be used in small ships, tugs, farm machinery,lorries, coaches and even cars.

The entire experiment was designed to highlight the need to develop alternatives to fossil fuels which are much less harmful to the environment, he said. As well as sunflower oil, recent research into environmentally friendly biofuels has concentrated on products such as bioethanol and biodiesel.

Sunflower oil as used in the farmers' demonstration boat produces slightly less power than conventional fuels, but its supporters say this is a small price to pay for the environmental advantages.

Because sunflower oil is a plant product, it contains none of the pollutants of petroleum-derived fuels.

In terms of cost, experts calculate that it could be competitive with diesel.

A farmer can produce about 3,000 kgs of sunflower seeds from a single hectare of land and from these seeds about 1,300 kgs of oil could be squeezed. The sale price for a kg of oil would be about 50 cents, about the same as diesel.

Source: Xinhua