Unintended Consequences - Bio-Diesel
With the cold weather we have been having, an Inconvenient Truth is coming out about Bio-Diesel.
All fuels will gel but Petroleum Diesel does so at around zero degrees Fahrenheit where Bio-Diesel is much higher - about ten depending on the original feedstock. This can make a difference.
From Kate Galbraith at the New York Times
comes this article about some Minnesota school busses running Bio-Diesel:
Biodiesel Congeals, School Buses Stall
Last month I wrote an article about the difficulties that winter conditions pose for various forms of renewable energy.
Biodiesel congeals at low temperatures, as John Jones, the transit director for the Summit Stage bus service in the Colorado mountains told me. He stopped using biodiesel in the winter after one of his buses filled with drunken revelers — and fueled by a biodiesel blend — stalled on the interstate in the middle of a frigid winter night.
Now a similar problem has hit Minnesota school buses, which also run on a biodiesel blend.
According to The Minneapolis Star Tribune, some school buses stalled in last week’s bitterly cold weather. Children got stuck in stalled buses or had a long wait in the freezing weather at their bus stops.
A few school districts were closed as a result of the problem.
Unlike most states, Minnesota law requires diesel fuel to carry a 2 percent biodiesel blend — a policy backed by soy farmers, whose crop accounts for most of the state’s biodiesel stock.
Diesel also can congeal at low temperatures, but experts say that biodiesel congeals more readily — though some ski resorts such as Sugarloaf in Maine have figured out how to run biodiesel blends year-round.
So we have a manufactured fuel that costs more energy to produce then it yields, only serves to bring food costs up and is only viable through a massive government subsidy program (our tax dollars). There are additives that you can use to mitigate the cold weather problems -- Sugarloaf probably keeps their tanks underground and out of the freezing weather.
Here is a good
website outlining a lot of issues with Bio-Diesel.
Posted by DaveH at January 24, 2009 6:32 PM
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