Bay Crossings Bay Environment

Ferries Powered by French Fry Oils?

By Teri Shore

It sounds crazy, but before long the Bay Area’s ferries could be running on veggie-power. Local ferry operators are taking notice of a clean, alternative fuel made from leftover restaurant grease and vegetable oils. The up-and-coming fuel is known simply as bio-diesel. Not only is it non-toxic, low polluting and easy on the environment, it smells something like French-fries!

The use of bio-diesel is growing on land and sea because it works just fine in conventional diesel engines while drastically reducing air pollution. On San Francisco Bay, sailboats have been filling up with soy diesel at Pt. Richmond for several years. Down the coast at the Channel Islands National Park, the 56-foot vessel Pacific Ranger regularly transports researchers and park staff to and from the islands under 100 percent soy bio-diesel power. In Hawaii, two 40-foot catamaran sailboats carry travelers on tours along Maui’s tangled Na Pali coast, powered entirely from bio-diesel made from leftover restaurant grease generated on the Islands. The Bay Area’s ferries may soon be next to try out this organic fuel.

Bio-diesel is made simply by reacting alcohol (usually methanol) with vegetable oils, such as soybean and canola, or recycled vegetable grease. The chemical process separates the vegetable esters (the bio-diesel) from the glycerins (which is then used in beauty creams and other products). Animal fats can also be processed into bio-diesel.

Bio-diesel has a lot going for it. From a health standpoint, bio-diesel ranks head-and-shoulders above petroleum diesel. Pure bio-diesel can reduce the cancer risks from diesel exhaust by 94 percent, practically eliminating cancer-causing air-toxics and particulate matter. Bio-diesel is also a plus for ferry crews and mechanics, as it is safe to handle, transport and store.

Bio-diesel is environmentally friendly because contains no sulfur (unlike regular diesel), so sulfur oxide emissions that contribute to smog and acid rain are eliminated. Emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, are reduced by 78% overall with use of bio-diesel. It is so environmentally friendly that bio-diesel is used to help clean up oil and other chemical spills.

Because it is made from renewable sources, bio-diesel can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. (Note to President Bush: Instead of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, why not mine the nation’s ample supply of restaurant greases for the liquid gold of bio-diesel?)

Here’s a little bit of history on why vegetable fuels burn so well in diesel engines: When Rudolf Diesel invented the compression-ignition engine, it was designed to run on whatever local fuel source was available. As in, if you had coconuts, make coconut juice. If peanuts were in abundance, use peanut oil. It wasn’t until the Texas oil strikes that petroleum oil became viable for compression ignition engines. Back when oil was cheap and plentiful, farmers would buy gasoline and then be given the low-grade "diesel" fuel to run in their tractors and farm equipment. Before long, petroleum diesel became the standard and vegetable-based fuels were forgotten. So bio-diesel is not really new, but a retro-fuel.

You might be wondering, at this point, if bio-diesel is so great, how come every diesel engine in the nation isn’t already running on it? Oil industry politics aside, bio-diesel is currently more expensive than diesel. Bio-diesel must be shipped into California from producers in Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, and Canada. However, in recent years the price of bio-diesel has dropped from $1.20 above the cost of diesel to 10 to 30 cents above the cost. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a $300 million program encouraging the production of bio-diesel and other alternative fuels. The US Department of Energy is working with the bio-diesel industry to reduce the cost of bio-diesel to less than $1 per gallon over the next 5 years.

Bio-diesel lubricates better than regular diesel, but in some older engines this property can cause rubber parts to fail, requiring the need for new gaskets and seals. Newer engines require few adjustments to operate with bio-diesel. One hundred percent bio-diesel thickens in temperatures less than 50 degrees, but this can be remedied by adding a percentage of regular diesel or other fuel additives.

From an environmental perspective, bio-diesel is great in all aspects, except when it comes to nitrogen oxide emissions, a key contributor to smog. Nitrogen oxide emissions are not reduced by use of bio-diesel due to high combustion temperatures in diesel engines. However, exhaust treatments, fuel additives and new technologies used in combination with bio-diesel can reduce these emissions. Overall, bio-diesel is an excellent transition fuel from petroleum diesel to much cleaner fuels such as natural gas, solar/wind power, and, eventually, fuel cells.

From Seattle to Cedar Rapids, bus and truck fleets around the U. S. are already converting to this clean-burning fuel. Some are using a mix of 20 percent bio-diesel and 80 percent diesel, known as B20. Others are going with 100 percent bio-diesel.

Recently, a young couple drove a bio-diesel powered Veggie Van across the country, making bio-diesel along the way to power the van. Read more about this adventure at www.veggievan.org.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, SFO parking buses are testing bio-diesel and an Olympic station in South San Francisco will soon be dispensing bio-diesel to drivers of diesel cars and trucks. Let’s hope our ferries won’t be far behind in filling their tanks with bio-diesel.

For more information on bio-diesel, check out the links on Bluewater Network’s website under Fast Ferries, www.bluewaternetwork.org