Domestic Fuel

Over 100 fleet managers, city, state and county government representatives, fuel producers and distributors and fuel retailers gathered together Wednesday in Dothan, Alabama to become informed leaders for the state’s emerging biofuels marketplace.

“We are gathered here today to bring you more awareness of the five alternative fuels of propane, compressed natural gas, E85, biodiesel and electric vehicles,” said Mark Bentley of Alabama Clean Fuels Coalition.

Speakers during the event included Dothan Mayor Mike Schmitz; Kathy Hornsby of Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs; Larry Fillmer, Executive Director of Auburn’s Natural Resources Management & Development Institute; Michelle Kautz, Market Development Manager from Growth Energy speaking on E85 and ethanol blender pumps, and Rob Dascal of Renewable Energy Group (REG) speaking on biodiesel. REG currently produces over 25% of America’s biodiesel.

Retailing biofuels in Alabama was discussed by Hayden Powers, Municipal Sales Manager for the McPherson Oil Company and the municipal use of alternative fuels was explored by David Lindon, Director of Hoover Fleet Management. The City of Hoover has been nationally & internationally recognized for its use of alternative fuels. Over 85% of Hoover’s vehicles are powered by alternative fuels. Clean Energy (the Boone Pickens Company) was represented by Mason Ecker. Clean Energy is the largest provider of Natural Gas in North America with a broad customer base in the refuse, transit, port, shuttle, taxi, regional trucking, airport and municipal fleet markets.

Other topics included propane, electric vehicles and funding opportunities for alternative fuels.

A one-day conference is scheduled to provide information to Pennsylvania biodiesel producers on what should be expected when the state’s B2 mandate goes into effect.

Biodiesel Magazine reports the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and the National Biodiesel Board are holding the April 20 event, called the Pennsylvania Biofuel Development Conference:

The mandate is based on trigger points, so when instate production—not installed capacity but actual production volumes—reaches 100 MMgy, the Pennsylvania biodiesel standard will move from B2 to B5. Keystone Biofuels’ Ben Wootten, also president of the Pennsylvania Biodiesel Producers Group, said installed biodiesel production capacity in Pennsylvania is currently 114 MMgy.

The B2 mandate is for on-road diesel fuel only, but Wootten, who just accepted the position of regulatory chair for the National Biodiesel Board, said Bioheat legislation was just recently proposed, Senate Bill 1282, which would seek a B5 mandate for all heating oil sold in Pennsylvania beginning May 2011.

The event will feature sessions focusing on statewide biodiesel distribution systems, best practices to ensure fuel quality, testing methods and more. To register and for more information, contact Michael Radar at (717) 787-9089.

San Francisco-based Solazyme, Inc., a producer of algae-based fuels, has been recognized as the best in the Sustainable Biofuels Technology category at the 2nd Annual Sustainable Biofuels Awards.

This Solazyme press release says the award was handed out in Amsterdam at the World Biofuels Markets conference:

“Solazyme is honored to be nominated among some of the top biofuel technology companies in the world for this award,” said Jonathan Wolfson, CEO, Solazyme. “We are grateful to accept this top spot as our team has worked tirelessly to establish Solazyme’s technology platform as a viable alternative to traditional oil production methods.”

The World Biofuels Market selected a panel of independent judges to evaluate and analyze the nominations for these awards. Taken into consideration were sustainability benefits as measured by GHG savings, environmental impact and further societal benefits from each nomination’s operational or technological advances. Solazyme’s technology shows exponential benefits over petroleum in all of these categories.

In the seven years since its inception, Solayzme produced the world’s first algal-based renewable diesel, the world’s first 100 percent algal-based jet fuel, and road-tested the first algae-derived biodiesel. In addition, the company is supplying the U.S. Department of Defense with 21,500 gallons of fuel for Navy compatibility testing, making Solazyme the largest commercial algae fuel contractor to date.

OK, maybe it’s not the drink of choice, but biodiesel is truly a fitting symbol for the 152nd birthday of Rudolf Diesel. Tomorrow, Thursday, March 18th, is the inventor’s birthday, and since he designed that first diesel engine to run on vegetable oil, the National Biodiesel Board is taking the day to recognize the role the clean-burning fuel has played in the past and will play in the future by designating the day as National Biodiesel Day:

“Biodiesel is currently the only advanced biofuel that is commercially available in the US; it’s the next generation of fuel, here now,” said National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe. “Rudolf Diesel originally designed diesel engines to use sustainable fuels. Today’s biodiesel is a modern application of his innovation.”

From the early diesel engine, there have been many improvements made to help improve fuel economy, power and performance but one of the most effective improvements comes in the form of biodiesel fuel. Biodiesel is a cleaner burning, advanced biofuel made from readily available renewable resources. National Biodiesel Day is celebrated annually on March 18th, Rudolf Diesel’s birthday.
Biodiesel users range from school districts to television studios and can be found in every corner of the country. Enterprise Holdings, which operates Alamo Rent A Car, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and National Car Rental, announced earlier this year that it will be converting its airport shuttle buses to run on biodiesel as part of its overall sustainability initiatives. The company is moving its entire fleet of more than 600 airport shuttle buses across 50 North American markets to at least 5 percent biodiesel (B5). The conversion to 20 percent biodiesel (B20) is happening immediately in nine markets, including Boston; Chicago; Denver; Detroit; Los Angeles; Miami; Raleigh/Durham; San Antonio and San Diego.

More information about Rudolf Diesel, biodiesel, and National Biodiesel Day is available at biodiesel.org.

“Biodiesel is a great fuel. It’s a great success story,” said Rob Joslin, the President of the American Soybean Association when I asked him during an interview (see below for audio) why biodiesel is so important to our country. While the biodiesel has had great success, it is currently facing a challenge – the $1 per gallon tax credit expired at the end of 2009 and has yet to be extended, although it is close.

Joslin explained to me that biodiesel is not just important for farmers and the industry itself, but also for consumers. A recent Department of Energy study showed that the biodiesel tax incentive saves consumers 35 cents per gallon at the pump. The biodiesel industry contributes $4 billion dollars to the country’s gross domestic product and generated over $866 million in direct tax revenue back into the tax coffers. In addition the industry provides 29,000 direct jobs and the number exceeds 50,000 when you factor in the indirect jobs associated with the production of biodiesel.

However, with the tax credit off the table, more than 23,000 workers have been idled. “The majority of the industry is idled because you can’t run a business on the hope that Congress will pass a bill in a future point in time,” said Joslin. “So the economies didn’t work the plant managers had to put those people in unemployment.”

Anther conundrum the industry is facing is the lack of synergies between current pieces of legislation. The RFS mandates biodiesel use and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard recognizes its low-carbon benefit; yet, our government hasn’t put into place the mechanisms for the industry to produce competitively priced fuel while it matures.
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Biodiesel is making it where the old saying goes, “Will it play in Peoria?” That certainly is the case for the Illinois town’s transit system, CityLink.

This story from the Peoria Journal Star says the city has been so pleased with the past performance of lower biodiesel blends, they decided to become the first fleet in the state to go to B20 to help extend the life of their aging buses:

“Biodiesel has been good for us. The engine makes more power (using biodiesel) and there’s less smoke out of the exhaust,” said CityLink maintenance director John Anderson of a B-20 program that involves 58 buses and 21 paratransit vehicles.

“(Assistant manager) Rick Tieken and I sat down last year to see what we could do. We’ve gone green as a facility on just about everything,” he said, referring to environmentally friendly products such as degreasers and soaps now used by CityLink.

Peoria is even buying the soybean-based biodiesel from a local supplier to help keep the money close to home.

Forty degrees below zero can be pretty common across the northern tier of states in the U.S. and Canada, especially this past winter. Those extremes can wreak havoc on biodiesel, and, for that matter, any diesel product.

But this article from Biodiesel Magazine says Thermex Engineered Systems Inc. has come up with a way to heat biodiesel during transit that can be retrofitted to upgrade existing uninsulated fuel tankers:

The biodiesel is heated by multiple HeatProbes, a patent-pending immersion heater that takes advantage of waste heat from the truck engine’s coolant, which is installed through a two-inch tank port. The supply and return lines are joined to the vehicle’s coolant lines, allowing the heat from the running engine to be transferred to the biodiesel in the tanker—negating the use of steam hook-ups or other limited-use heating alternatives.

A HeatProbe system can be installed on any tanker truck or trailer, according to Thermex Engineered Systems, and multiple probes and tanks can be plumbed up in parallel sequence. Trailers can also be equipped with a stand-alone heating package that includes an onboard coolant heater mounted on the tanker service rail. This is useful for extended layovers and will also accommodate towing by any tractor with or without quick-coupler connections.

Thermex says the system is good for any equipment or vehicle powered by biodiesel that runs in cold weather can use the HeatProbe system, because the fuel is heated “in-tank” to overcome any cold filter plug point issues and to prevent product clouding.

A recent study by some University of Virginia researchers who say that algae might not be as environmentally friendly as some regular row crops when it comes to making biodiesel is coming under fire by algae and algal-biofuel organizations.

As you might remember from my post back on January 22, 2010, a study headed by Andres Clarens said that “algae’s environmental footprint is larger than other terrestrial crops.” But according to the executive director for the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (and several other groups that commented on that January 22 article), those Virginia researchers got it wrong. And NAABB’s Dr. Jose Olivares tells me that the main problem is in the fact that Clarens used data that just is not current anymore.

“A lot of [the data] came out during the aquatic species program, which ran for quite a few years, but ended in the early [1990s].”

He says that old data doesn’t account for the technological advances made in the last 15+ years that have cut algae oil’s production’s energy usage by 100 fold, while creating an environmental footprint for algae that is 20-100 times smaller than row crops.

[There's] a huge danger of misinterpreting what is possible with these types of technologies.”

Olivares points out that there are some positive aspects of the Virginia study, including pointing out that algae can be grown using wastewater … which Olivares says the algal-biofuel industry is already doing.

You can hear more of my conversation with Dr. Olivares below.

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It’s come a long ways since its early days as part of West Central CO-OP’s Ralston, Iowa (right next to this author’s hometown of Glidden, Iowa) operation, and now Renewable Energy Group has become North America’s largest wholly-owned biodiesel manufacturing and marketing source.

This company press release says REG gained that status after recently acquiring biodiesel plants in Iowa and Illinois:

Shareholders in Central Iowa Energy, LLC, (30 MGY facility in Newton, Iowa) and Blackhawk Biofuels, LLC, (45 MGY facility in Danville, Ill.) voted affirmatively in late February to an all-stock transaction making their facilities wholly-owned by Renewable Energy Group, Inc. The consolidation brings REG’s wholly-owned manufacturing capacity to 122 MGY.

REG’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Stroburg cited demand by major petroleum distributors and oil refiners as a key factor in the decision to move forward with plant consolidation. “With the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) now in effect, the distillate market is demanding technical expertise, dependable supply, more efficient distribution and creative pricing options from major biodiesel partners,” Stroburg said.

The transaction is part of a nearly year-long process to bring the plants under the REG umbrella. REG’s other wholly-owned facilities include a 12-million-gallon-a-year plant where it all began, Ralston, Iowa, and a 35 MGY biodiesel refinery in Houston.

Breathing easier is what the American Lung Association is all about, and that’s why the group’s North Dakota chapter has teamed up with the North Dakota Soybean Council, North Dakota Office of Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency, Red River Valley Clean Cities Coalition, and the North Dakota Department of Commerce to offer a free workshop on clean-burning biodiesel, Friday, March 26th, from 9-11:30 a.m. at the Ramada Plaza Suites and Convention Center in Fargo:

The Red River Valley Clean Cities Coalition, established by the U.S. Department of Energy, is offering a free workshop on biodiesel and diesel fuels, presented by nationally recognized fuel expert Hoon Ge of MEG Corp. , Minneapolis. Ge will discuss recent refining changes in traditional petroleum diesel, how to recognize and respond to problems with diesel fuels, and the growing role of biodiesel in North Dakota’s transportation industry.

Registration and parking are free, but seating is limited. Contact Kelly Marczak at 651.268.7590 or Kelly.Marczak@lungmn.org to register.