Diesel vs Biodiesel Pricing?

With high oil, high gas and even higher diesel prices, many Biodiesel enthusiasts are having a field day with "I told you so", but this would be a mistake. Though the biodiesel price seems coupled to dino diesel pricing on a competitive and resources level...they are actually surprisingly unassociated for many customers in the industry. And generally, customers "happily" pay more.
Consider that the majority of the transportation biodiesel is sold to government or private fleets. They are often have a reason for the extra "effort" (at least at this time) for running bio or a blend, usually health/patriotic/local economic reasons, but more frequently now a government mandate. These are not the same market forces on petroleum fuels.
Often I recommend small producers or distributors to raise their biodiesel prices as the number one way to improve their business model, even against their instincts in times like this. Consistently the feedback is shock and pleasant surprise. Customers expect to pay a premium (at this time) for a unique fuel (at this time). The negative pricing feedback that forms impressions on biodiesel retailers often from "prospective" customers on the phone, the equivalent of tie-kickers and window shoppers. Real market analysis reveals a true picture: price is decoupled from petroleum, and premium pricing is fine, and good for the fledgling industry. And soon the market will reflect that.
So don't get too haughty about your cheap biodiesel...expensive biodiesel is actually better and probably inevitable in the near future. Sorry 'bout bursting your bubble.

Food vs Fuel? 1st vs 2nd Generation Biofuels.

When discussing biofuels, it would be better to educate on the difference between current "first generation" biofuels (corn/sugar ethanol and soy/rape biodiesel) and future "second generation" biofuels (cellulosic/crude biomass ethanol and BTL(biomass-to-liquid)/crude biomass biodiesel). Current first generation biofuels are indeed rather unsustainable in large production but do provide an entryway and market demand for the higher-overhead and R&D needed second generation fuels.

Second generation fuels are going to be orders of magnitude more efficient and sustainable, deriving their biomass from non-food farming and management of un-cultivatable lands. Some technology still needs R&D (cellulosic ethanol is probably 5 years from mass production, algae biodiesel is in R&D stages) and other seed money. F-T (Fischer Trop)biomass-to-biodiesel technology is older and tested but requires a large overhead and scale to make profitable. The German government has provided overhead and there is a F-T based BTL pilot plant making biodiesel from crude (non-food) biomass: http://www.choren.com/en/ So, while these first generation biofuels are temporarily linked to the larger food problem, they are also opening up the route to more efficient biofuels that will decouple them from food issues yet bring the benefits of energy independence and lowering environmental impact.

Getting back to Blogging

Well, sorry. A lot was happening. New Baby (Yeah!) new jobs and bunches of projects. Our biofuel (wvo) heating project is continuing to save money in several test houses. In our humble abode...about $500 savings in 2007 calender year...more expected this year with the colder winter and higher fuel costs.

On the Jeep side, important news. I spearheaded an attempt at a recall on the fuel filter assembly. The fuel heater (mostly un-needed) element projects into the uper housing which, due to the all-vacuum (no lift pump) nature of the fuel system, often contains air. This can over-heat, burn out and cause an air-leak. If you have a CRD Libby, take a look for upper plugs and leaks. Pumping the primer will often squirt out fuel, even faster if the element wire plug is pulled out. Bad News! Extra air in the system is the least of the problems (and it is a big problem). Leaking ful could potentially start a fire, and there is one possible case. If you have a Libby CRD, you probably already know to go to http://www.lostkjs.com/, check under the CRD section for more info. The NTSB gave it a pass, but that doesn't mean much, they usually don't do much until someone dies. So, unplug those fuel heaters! Note: this is not a biodiesel issue.

On fuel pricing, Diesel at the pump has actually passed the price of biodiesel being deliverd to my house by $0.30 . So now there are even less reasons to not love biodiesel!

A brief update...

So, let's catch up. Here's whats new to the BiodieselJeep and the biofuels family:

-The BiodieselJeep is running fine. We moved to a about 30-50% splash-blend for the winter and have kept at that since then. Splash blending (for those who want to pick up some more biofuel-lingo) just means that you dump it in the tank, no muss, no fuss. That's one of the great things about biodiesel. Why 30-50%? My biodiesel container is 5 gallons, and I dump it in when it gets mid to low. No science here, just convenience.
-The BiodieselJeep mileage is improving. Diesels generally get better as they break in. There is a simple mod that also got us another 1-2 mpg. Around town as a baby-carrrier the Jeep gets 23 mpg consistently. Compare that to any other mid-small sized SUVs. Which brings me to another point: The curb weight of the Jeep with the diesel option is alot closer to a mid-sized SUV than many of the small SUV's it gets compared to. A CRV? maybe. But often it gets compared to the RAV-4, which is sooo tiny. Not fair, I say! Highway with a big load and driving 70 mph: 26 mpg. At 55 we get near 30...but that just isn't realistic.
-Meet the "new" Jetta, same as the "old" Jetta. I crashed the black Jetta. I cried and cried; that lil' honey could run. Cried until I got the insurance check, which was more than I paid for it!Diesels are selling for ridiculous amounts. so my insurance company paid out a market price and that took the edge off. I bought a white Jetta TDI, same year, same mileage but with more doodads and a moon-roof. To make it even better, I sold the wreck to some clever boys from Vermont who wanted to slap together a diesel hybrid. Hopefully as you read this, the FrankenJetta is haunting the Green Mountains, terrorizing gas stations with inhuman mileage. Bwoooaaaahaaahaahaaa!!!
-Can't drive 55. Look, let us be honest. You and I should drive slower if we really want better mileage. All the statistics are very clear: every 4-5 mph over 55 drops your mileage by at least 1 mpg. But in my state (CT) highways are 65 mph...and everyone drives 75. Now, the white Jetta has bigger injectors and stuff, which means it really wants to fast. Fast as in not dangerous but fast as in sorry-officer-I-think-my-speedometer-is-broken. Still, I never get below 41 mpg. I could be getting close to 48...(someone is doing math right now...yes...naughty boy). The guilt haunts me at night, but sporty turbo diesels combined with autobahn engineering makes for irresistible fun.

What is in a Name (or URL)?

We lost our domain name for a while, and that meant very little blogging. To make a long story short...never use lowcostdomains.com or wyattwebb services...pure evil. Anyhow, more posts to come. The next post will have a long awaited (I am sure...) update on our research and our biodiesel powered vehicles.

Berlin Fair contributes Biofuels

The folks at the South Kensington Fire department donated all their used cooking oil from their booth at the Berlin Fair. If you've been to a country fair, you know there's a lot of frying going on. Thanks Guys! Your oil will probably heat my house for at least a month this winter.

Learning to use raw oils will be a key part to our biofuels future...if only because raw oils will always be cheaper than processed oils (like biodiesel). Many current commercial waste oil furnaces can burn straight waste veg oil with some filtering, and our experiments on using current home furnaces is progressing well.

Perhaps by next year many homes in Berlin will be heated by biodiesel or waste veg oil...that would be something worth crowing about at the next fair!

B-DJeep and more Biofuels Research

We had another interesting day of education and research, this time into home heating furnace use and biofuels. Here in the North East, petroleum home heating oil (basically diesel fuel) represents a large portion of our petroleum use. I have been working for many years now with several groups on biofuels in this area. Fortunately, home furnaces are relatively cheap (as in, not a $25,000 Jeep) and forgiving pieces of equipment, and lend themselves to rough experiments. So far the B-DJeep house has been running on one form or another of blended fuels for over a year.

Prof. Gene Bartholomew and the student at Porter and Chester Institute helped do a comparitive series of furnace tests of 100% Biodiesel, Biodiesel blends, and some new experimental biofuel blends. What was most significant about these test was that this was the first time in the US that there has been a side-by-side comparison of efficiency, flu gases and motor draw for biofuels under controlled conditions on several equipment platforms. Gus Kellog from www.greenleafbiofuels.com was there to supply the ASTM biodiesel, as was Rich Hosley from www.halehillfarms.com, a biodiesel blend heating oil supplier.

The results were surprising to everyone. The literature and previous experiments with home-brewed BioD led most people to expected difficulty with 100% Biodiesel, but the ASTM commercial grade Biodiesel lit easily under stock equipment previously set to run on No.2 Diesel. The same went for the experimental 20% blends of cheap biofuels. And a bigger surprise was the efficiency of the fuels. On each of the biofuels including 100% biodiesel, the variation of the efficiency was under 5% from No. 2 on every furnace tested. Some biofuels testing higher than the baseline for No.2 diesel! A variation of 5% is pretty standard error margin, one can expect that amount of variation from repeated firings of ANY furnace using standard fuel.

What is exceptionally nice about the efficiency data is that this breaks some economic barriers and stereotypes about blended fuel uses. For instance, a blend of 50% biodiesel isn't very helpful if it has half the efficiency of No. 2 and makes you use twice as many gallons to heat your hot house! I honestly expected without changing the settings on the furnace, these fuels would perform some when below 7%. Most of the chemical energy values of either Biodiesel or other vegetable oil fuels are generally 5% below comparable petroleum fuels. The added viscosity of these fuels would make us think that the spray pattern would be slightly degraded, further reduce the burn efficiency. But not so. Apparently, viscosity is rather easily tolerated in furnaces, and the high inherent oxygen content of these fuels makes up for some of the energy differences in these furnace situations.

The students who were working toward HVAC certification will eventually be seeing these biofuels in the field, and they were interested to work with the new fuels and participate in the research. Thanks to Gene, we also will be able to move forward on several projects related to the experiment biofuels knowing that we have efficient blends for general use in homes.

On this blog we will keep certain projects below the radar for commercial reasons. But we WILL let you know in general terms about our research... Maybe being aware of new alternative fuels research will give you hope for the future and to inspire you to make a move for the better in your own home. Your dollars, your fuels, your country, and your future. Think about it.