Yo Truck Makers, Pay Attention!

The Time to Put Biodiesel In Your Tank Is Now!

I think that a product that cuts pollution dramatically, increases truck engine’s efficiency with Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel, weans us off foreign oil in a very small way and can be made from numerous renewable sources, would be in high demand across the US.  That miracle product is biodiesel and in many ways it meets and exceeds all of those expectations. 

Also, strangely enough, it is hailed almost unanimously as a saving technology by schools, unions, truckers, farmers, environmentalists, doctors and a world class country western singer.  And yet, just as strangely, it is not being used nearly as much as all that adulation would imply for a very simple reason, engine manufacturers are ambiguous about the fuel and consequently the large trucking firms hesitate to allow the blends into their fleet.

If the majors won’t buy, the rank and file, and smaller companies hesitate to climb on board. After all, most independent truckers and small fleet owners buy their units from the larger groups, who then turn around and buy new units. Just to allay the suspense, all engine manufacturers allow biodiesel in their engines in blends of 5% or less. Anything above that is tolerated but not recommended, which is a flat shame on them because the benefits are so transparently positive.

So What Is Biodiesel?

First a quick chemistry lesson, biodiesel is not vegetable oil, it’s an actual diesel fuel made from vegetable oil and or animal fats mixed in with methanol, scientifically manipulated under strict temperature, dosage and pressure control in a process called transesterification.  At the end of the process almost all the methanol is separated out, glycerin drops to the bottom and sold and the biodiesel is pumped off. What is called biodiesel is the same color as #2 diesel, smells faintly of olive oil and will blend completely with existing petroleum diesel. It can increase NoX in the higher blends, but not to a noticeable degree, and decreasing CO2 is an added benefit.

The economics of biodiesel are tightly wrapped up in political considerations.  The Federal government will pay the blender one dollar for every gallon of biodiesel he blends into the petroleum/bio mix. Only the blender gets the dough, which is why he can then pass on that savings down the chain.  The trucker will not see a penny of that, so I won’t get into that particular rats nest except to point out that if you removed the subsidies from any form of transportation energy source, we would all be walking at this point.

Suffice it to say that biodiesel will closely follow the price of petroleum diesel and might even be more expensive at times because most biodiesel is sold as a blend of anything from 2% bio, 98% petroleum all the way to 100% bio in special applications. But the core of the biodiesel business is in the 2 to 20% range.  A quick note on nomenclature, B20 is a 20% mix of biodiesel, B5 is 5% etc.  The reason for these blending amounts is based on the supply and demand of feedstocks such as soy oil, chicken fat or other natural fats.  One acre of soy beans will produce 48 Gallons of oil. Simple math indicates that to replace the 34 billion gallons of diesel sold in America last year you would need 700 million acres of soy beans.

Engine Makers?

With all that in mind, how can we explain the attitude of the engine manufacturers towards biodiesel?  It is based partly on bitter experience with bad batches in the early part of the century, it is based on anecdotal reports of engine filters and injectors clogging up and it is based on the simple fact that not all biodiesel is created equal.

In the beginning there was very little control over biodiesel production, individuals and corporations would produce batches of biodiesel in highly individualized production facilities.  There is now a national biodiesel standard just as there is a national diesel fuel standard. As long as the biodiesel conforms to ASTM D6751 and is produced from a reliable facility with ongoing testing services, there should be no problem as far as gelling and clouding. 

There is another drawback to biodiesel due to the fact that it is a good solvent.  In older engines, the first couple of tank fill ups can lead to injector and fuel clogging simply because it is cleaning the fuel circuit, from the tank to exhaust pipe.  The accumulated dirt has to be picked up and delivered to the engine itself.   Mechanics familiar with biodiesel routinely recommend that the filters be changed in the first few weeks to ensure smooth operation.

Soon the car manufacturers will be importing diesel powered examples of their existing models.  The diesel Mini has been available in Germany for the last four years; it gets 600 miles per tank of fuel.  In Europe diesel power competes very nicely and is hardly noticed at the rack. As a matter of fact, 60% of the cars in France run on diesel fuel, and all that diesel has biodiesel in it, that’s the law and those are my lungs!  Here, a small operation in Berkeley still feels the need to “educate” the people who buy their fuel, and biodiesel still has that trendy, tree-hugging aura the industry is trying to shed.

Ecology is not a trucking industry byword.  But engine efficiency is, and running B5 (5% biodiesel) is a great way to keep those pistons pumping because the lubricity of the bio is legendary.  It dramatically cuts down on the friction within the engine. Your truck will last a lot longer and smell a lot better.

Truckers, Make Your Own Fuel!

If there is one thing more troubling to the trucking industry than the rising cost of fuel, it’s the uncertainty of where and when the prices will go up next. At the same time, there are newer considerations that have to be faced, questions about fuel efficiency, ecological considerations, and legislation coming into effect that will mandate newer, less efficient fuels like ethanol in the gas market.

The simple task of converting to ULSD did not go flawlessly as announced since numerous fleet owners noticed that the new fuel was more abrasive than anticipated. Maintenance schedules had to be tightened and fuel managers started looking to ways to protect themselves in meaningful ways.

One solution quickly came to the forefront, biodiesel, with its significantly higher lubricity, ready availability and useful ecological message, became a popular route out of the fuel mess. Then a few bad experiences under cold climates quickly turned the swan back into an ugly duckling. The problems were major because of inexperienced operators running small biodiesel batch processors produced fuel that under winter conditions turned to soap and clogged filters. It was a repeat of the horrors of the early days of ULSD which dissolved some of the rubber lines in the older trucks.

That was then and this is now. Biodiesel can be made efficiently, inexpensively and most importantly reliably in the new modern facilities. The new ASTM standards clearly set down the tests and results that the fuel must meet and the most modern technologies do not even require the use of water, the main source of contamination from soap and a major source of pollution from waste water flowing out of the process.

Even engine builders are coming around to the new reality, if Cummins allows B20 (20% biodiesel blend) in their larger engines, can the rest of the world be far behind? No truck manufacturer completely disallows the blend, but most are hedging their bets at the B5 level. Those numbers could be an endangered species as local, state and federal laws move towards more and more renewable energy legislation.

So what is biodiesel? Quite simply it is the product of a process called transesterification, a fancy word for converting a mixture of vegetable oil or animal fats and methanol into a natural form of diesel fuel and glycerin. What it is not is the pure vegetable oil that some farmers are putting into their tractors. It is a one to one replacement fuel for diesel, it can be run straight (B100) or mixed in with petroleum diesel and it carries a lot of advantages over the petroleum product.

To start with it is much more lubricating than ULSD, in concentration of just 5% engine rebuilders have noticed up to 25% less wear on engine components. In real dollar terms that translates to 25% more miles between rebuilds, which, for major trucking firms may not mean that much since they resell their units on average every three years, but for the independent trucker buying these trucks means money in the bank.. Using biodiesel on a regular basis also significantly reduces all forms of pollution. It is made from natural substances containing no carbon, so CO emissions are reduced. Another advantage is political, it reduces our dependence on foreign oil sources and hands jobs back to the farmers of America.

When Willie Nelson sings On the Road Again, he means in a biodiesel powered truck.

So why is it not more available?

Actually there are pockets of biodiesel all over North America with some states more aggressive than others in promoting its use. But one solution that is already used in Germany is for trucking companies with large regional fleets and even cross-country haulers, to make their own in 3 to 5 million gallon plants strategically located near main shipping and hauling routes.

This is not a light decision, a 5 million gallon a year turnkey facility, will set your company back about $6 million if you need to build it from scratch. The processor itself is around $2 million. A complete facility will require fueling racks, storage tanks for the biodiesel, feedstock and catalyst. But the processes are now fully automated, can be handled by one or two employees, will include a comprehensive lab to ensure that the fuel meets ASTM specs and will allow the owner to set his own production schedule based on demand, price of feedstock and blending demands. Of course if you decide to build a bigger plant, there will be demand for your offtake from other companies like yours.

On the other hand there are many really small 40 to 300 gallon a day units on the market that would allow small trucking companies to make enough fuel over a weekend the take care of business. The only drawback would be finding a suitable source of oil for the machine.

One of the advantages of the new plants is that they allow the use of a multitude of feedstock, from palm oil to chicken fat, and blends of these different products. All this makes for a more flexible production schedule and process. If soy oil is hitting stratospheric pricing, then a simple computer adjustment will change the process for palm, or recuperated restaurant greases. There is a price flexibility built into the system that is not available with petroleum. And the Federal Government will give you a dollar for every gallon you mix in with your regular load.

The time may have come for you to seriously consider installing your own production facility. Not because it will ensure plentiful supplies of first grade fuel for your trucks, but because biodiesel will soon be mandated somewhere on your routes; because biodiesel is an easy fuel to implement unlike some of the more exotic solutions like hydrogen. But mostly you should look into it because it will give you the feeling of doing something very important for your trucks, your drivers and the world in general.

The Changing Face of Biodiesel

The New World of Biodiesel Production
Peter Brown

Imagine a three way chicken and egg question, what came first, the chicken, the egg or the nest? That is the latest conundrum facing anyone trying to get started in the biodiesel business. How do you ensure that over the life of your plant your production will find an open market, access to feedstock, will not contravene local ordinances, and will have a trained and efficient pool of employees and other random thoughts?

Right now, the best answer is to start with the feedstocks because that determines how far and how fast you can adapt to changing market conditions and. Typically feedstock prices represent about 85% of the price of your biodiesel. Never assume that your present choice of feedstock will be available, acceptable or within a reasonable price range when you need it.

Take the case of palm oil; although there are tons of the stuff available all over the world, palm plantations in Africa are for the most part run over and abandoned, still, many countries are now considering legislation to ban palm from their shores because of the food or fuel campaign being so relentlessly pursued in the “civilized” world. In the US for example, no one questions the food versus fuel argument when it comes to soy oil, and soy is so much more useful than palm since it serves as the basis for so many other products, contains one half to a third of the oil compared to palm and is a whole lot healthier. As a biodiesel producer, be aware that ecologists in some parts of the world are not in favor of using existing plant and animal life for transportation purposes.

On the other hand, a small country like Liberia could be completely energy independent using only locally available palm oil, a cold crushing facility and a medium sized biodiesel plant. Fully 80% of their potential production is overgrown through neglect, wars and disease, but what remains could power generators, trucks and buses and revive the economy replacing $18.00 a gallon gas with $1.45 biodiesel.

Predicting new feedstocks is an arcane science, jatropha came out of nowhere, and there is much talk of camelina or algae. Will the new processors be able to handle these newer oils? Will animal fats be cheaper? How will they be prepared for production? We only recommend a multi feedstock processor because as long as the chosen feedstock meets the basic chemical composition criteria, you can probably make biodiesel out of it without too many constraints. But be aware that a “small” change can hide a lot of rework, so if the processor is flexible then the programming can adapt the catalyst, feedstock, and methanol equation quite easily to meet your immediate requirements. If not, plan to spend quality time with your plant designer.

Even the new oils may come with a high price up the learning curve. Jatropha is not the easy conversion we all thought it would be and we are hearing stories from places like Mozambique and Peru that the oil itself needs careful monitoring, let alone harvesting and crushing. It may be cheap, but there may be a reason for that. Algae oil is slowly appearing in experimental reactors and ponds, but the jury is still out on the ideal mono-cell, the way to harvest the oil and how to create a sustainable economic model for the colorful scum.

Lowering the feedstock price is an essential tactic for the new installation and one way to do that is to blend different oils so that the FFA and other levels are within acceptable transesterification limits. Not all units can handle blends, and some blends can be exotic like chicken fat and soy, or coconut and palm. These are actual requests that EMT has fielded from places like Fiji and Liberia, places where mistakes will be hard to correct and changes impossible to implement. The term blending does not mean mixing the various oils as they head into the processor, it means a homogeneous blending of all the components so that the output does not contain pockets of one or the other feedstock, and that blending comes with a price. Blending is a centrifuge or two beavering away ahead of the processing plant.

As far as exotic oils and strange blends, wise plant manufacturers will protect themselves in one of two ways. The first is to test run the plant for final delivery on their approved oil, most often virgin soy, and provide the buyer with the keys to the plant only after it has run on that oil for a specific number of hours producing ASTM or EN standard fuel. The second will request a sample of the oil that will be run in the plant and have enough adjustments built into the system to allow for other oils to be used. Always get the second option because there are many ways that the future of the facility will hinge on the ready acceptance of alternate feedstocks. But again, most of the plants built over the last four years are probably running on a different feedstock than originally planned, and high on that list are WVO and animal fats.

Feedstock flexibility and availability are not the only considerations, there are volume considerations. The facility is expected to run continuously at near capacity, but what if there are climactic considerations, availability issues, local ordinances and other reasons to slow down production? What if, as happened recently in a facility in France, for religious reasons a 100,000 ton unit was not allowed to blend non-kosher animal fats because the glycerin offtake would be unsellable in Africa? That is where the ability to run portions of the plant is an essential consideration. The modern modular facilities have multiple production lines. This has two advantages, the first was just discussed, and the second is that there can be no single source failures leading to a complete system shutdown with the attendant horrors of an idle plant while the single large processor is repaired. Continuous production on multiple lines can be slowed or even stopped on two of the lines for whatever reason, and startups are simpler because the facilities can be brought on line sequentially. Each line can be tailored to perform specific tasks to meet clear goals. One can be highly productive for glycerin offtakes, the others strictly ASTM biodiesel.

Robert Luiten, CEO of Zenergy International Inc. started his whole operation with a clear idea of what biodiesel and the energy world going forward would entail. “We decided right from the start that every one of our facilities would enable flexibility and ability to act on opportunities to ensure profitability at all times. We will be opening world scale facilities in France, Malaysia, both sides of the United States, South America and possibly Africa with a clear understanding that all our facilities will have an underlying mission of allowing any feedstock at any time and without national limits. Each facility will be ecologically clean, have a small footprint, be standardized across the globe, allow for expansion to meet specific needs and will be logistically optimized. There is no other way to meet the challenges coming at us in the biodiesel market.”

Feedstock issues are the first step, processor technology issues are another. But having settled them, you are going to decide what size facility you will need. Usually the best options is to determine your optimal feedstock availability and add 20% more capacity to ensure that in year 5 of operations you will have the ability to meet increased demand. The increase may tax your available financing, but it will be worth it in the long run. We have watched a number of facilities built around the world and very often the startup is hardly completed when the owner applies to double his capacity. It really makes no difference if the plant was a 10,000 Ton unit or a 100,000 ton unit, the need to grow is universal, the demand for product steadily increases.

Also, give yourself credit for a steep learning curve; what was an insurmountable obstacle when you first started your project is now random and routine. Your new knowledge will allow you to negotiate better prices, put you in contact with local, national and international businesses, increase your credit limit and provide a host of new services you never knew existed.

But if you really are unable to swallow the 20% increase, a better tactic is to drop down 15% in size to locate yourself in a more comfortable zone with a facility that allows doubling in size with little additional inputs further down the line. Discuss this with the plant designer so that he can incorporate redundant sections, larger capacities and adequate foundations to support the eventual increase. Also make sure that the design you select can be upgraded in an easy operation that will not require new buildings, new controls and additional employees. Stacking key components and over sizing blenders, dryers, pumps and piping is best done earlier rather than later.

Other roadblocks to getting the most for your money include a too small site, access restrictions, and local ordinances. This is where long term planning comes in handy.

Locating the plant in relation to a number of factors for example can be crucial. Your plant site will play a key role in what type of facility you will be running. In the US we are seeing a move towards smaller regional facilities located not too far from specific feedstocks, within walking distance of a crusher and serviced by a rail spur with load and offload racks. These operations address the crucial issue of feedstock and biodiesel transportation, and are built and operated by a local or regional group. Financing is often from a local branch of a large bank and the whole operation rapidly becomes a source of community pride, jobs and taxable income.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, and not competing with the local facility, are the huge, multinational companies who build larger facilities in or near ports because they have few illusions and intend to tap into the international feedstock pool immediately. Where you place your plant is not related to size or anything, but be aware that the location can influence a lot of decisions down the road.

A final note on what is really a very shallow review of the changing face of biodiesel production; make sure that you understand every aspect of your new venture. From legislation and incentives on the books, upcoming rules and regulations, public opinion trends, who your friends are and will be, automotive buying habits, shipping conditions, ecological impacts and other trends. Biodiesel people are a very open and friendly group as a whole, do not hesitate to call and ask, there are websites, government agencies, corporations and journalists waiting for your call.

Make the call, and then build the plant!