Tacoma Wants More Biodiesel, We Hear

12 comments

• M Mal December 28, 2007

  That will be great! I just used the pump down at Port of Tacoma today and it was running ultra-slow. Hopefully they can heat that business up at the new location in 2008. Biodiesel users unite!

• D Davest December 28, 2007

  I heard directly from the guy that delivers the stuff that Safeway plans to slowly add it to the selection at most of their gas stations.

• S Sassy McButterpants December 28, 2007

  I’m still holding out for a Mr. Fusion…

• M Mike December 31, 2007

  The S 19th St would be great! (esp. since it’s on my way to work). Do we know if this is B99 or some petroleum-downed version of bio?

• M Mike December 31, 2007

  BTW,
  If you wait a good 20-30 seconds after you turn the pump on Pac Hwy in Fife, it usually runs pretty well. You can see the hose jump a little when it’s primed.

• Z zintradi December 31, 2007

  For all you 167 north commuters, the new shell station they just built off the new north sumner exit sells biodielel.

• Z zintradi December 31, 2007

  also, a while back there was that guy from Clean energy projects that had that waist-to-diesel plant on a semi truck. He was going to build a fuel plant in fife on Tribal land. You supposedly were going to be able to bring your garbage to the plant for processing and get credit for fuel. Does anyone know whatever happened with that deal. There’s nothing on Cleanenergyprojects.com

• J jamie from thriceallamerican December 31, 2007

  Mike@5, that will be B99 indeed, per a source at Propel Biofuels.

• C CJ January 2, 2008

  Dumb question. I heard on talk radio that bio fuel messes with the system in cold weather. Anyone know about this before I buy and head across town to 19th and Stevens

• J jamie from thriceallamerican January 2, 2008

  An excellent question, CJ.

  Biodiesel has a higher cloud-point and gel-point than petroleum diesel, meaning that it is more likely to have problems in cold weather—hard starting or in very cold weather completely dying. (We had a little, uh, experience on the Hood Canal Bridge once when running B100 when it was really cold, dark, and windy. I won’t rehash in detail, but ‘nuff said.) The exact gel point varies depending on what sort of oil was used to make the biodiesel, but problems usually start to manifest themselves at about 25°F. The good news is, mixing with high-quality petroleum diesel can mitigate this problem—around here, mixing to about B50 is usually sufficient in cold weather, or you can go to about B20 if you want to be absolutely sure. (Folks in the bitterly-cold Midwest supposedly regularly use B20 in sub-zero weather.) Adding kerosene and other winterizing agents to the fuel can also help. The operative thing is to keep an eye on the weather and blend appropriately at the pump.

  If you do gel up, there is some possibility of wax build-up in the fuel filter, in which case it’s a good idea to pop in a new filter.

  Sorry for the verbose answer, hope it answers your question ok.

• J jamie from thriceallamerican January 3, 2008

  Without getting into too many details (partly because I don’t have time to drag up any specific info), Pimentel has gotten a lot of coverage for his energy studies related to biofuels, but these have been widely discredited by both the ethanol and biodiesel communities as being in contrast with other relevant studies. (Consider the source, I guess, but…) In a nutshell, his energy input calculations seem to be pretty inflated—electricity required for processing is way beyond DOE estimates, he includes energy used to build farm equipment even though this investment is spread across decades, includes the energy to produce food for farm workers, etc. Even if these are valid concerns, the accuracy of the estimates is at best questionable.

  Now, there are some definitely some concerns about the efficiency of ethanol production using the current means (corn ethanol), and these have gained wide press in recent years. For biodiesel, however, studies pretty much universally show that for soy biodiesel, the energy yield is over 3 units of energy yielded per 1 unit of input.

  This is not to say that the whole thing is ideal from the soil conservation, biodiversity, and habitat destruction angles. There is fallow farmland in the US that can be used, and farmers do need profitable crops, but ultimately there is not so much farmland that we can meet our fuel needs with soy, canola, or really any other conventional crop. And deforestation is an out-and-out-sin. However, (a) exciting things are happening with biodiesel from algae, and (b) biodiesel from waste oil does some nice things to close the loop. Unfortunately, unless you’re making your own fuel, it’s not easy to go the waste-oil route right now, and algae is a yet-to-come development for the end user. But there is hope.

  I guess you could always convert to run straight waste vegetable oil.

  It’s about weighing the options…there are some big environmental benefits that can be realized too. Nothing’s free.

• S Squid January 3, 2008

  Thanks Jaimie. I too thought that Pimentel was inflating the input thing somewhat. Though he also makes some good points about the biofuels community not including some valid inputs. Truth, as usual, probably somewhere in that middle.

  I’d love to see more investment being made into some of the really great research being done in the electrical engineering field about using nano devices to create electricity from heat/cold differentials, and tons of others. Having seen this work personally when working with faculty doing the research, I’m optimistic that we can use technological innovation to work ourselves out of this mess. Not confident, but optimistic. There are some awfully smart people out there starting to work on this – we just need to encourage more of it, and fast.

  And you’re right, nothing’s free indeed – except not using. :)