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.