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Biodiesel Coming to More Local Filling Station Pumps
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Biodiesel Coming to More Local Filling Station Pumps
All “Eco” Station Coming Soon to Santa Cruz
By Michael Thomas
This fall, a vacant gas station on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz will get new life as an outlet for environmentally friendly biodiesel fuel. The former Union 76 station at Ocean Street and Soquel Avenue has been tentatively renamed EcoDepot, and will also offer electric bike sales and organic produce.
According to Michael Sack, CEO of Pacific Biofuels in Moss Landing, Santa Cruz planning officials gave the project a tentative approval on Aug. 10. He expects to start selling biodiesel, and only biodiesel, at the location within the next month.
The new station is just the latest step in Santa Cruz County’s gravitation towards the vegetable oil-based alternative that can be poured right into most diesel vehicles with no modifications.
Eighteen months ago, Jorah Roussopoulos began selling it at Mountain Feed and Farm Supply in Ben Lomond.
“We’re the world’s only solar-powered biodiesel filling station,” he boasts.
Roussopoulos learned his enthusiasm for alternative fuels early in life. When he was just a baby, his father was growing sugar beets with the intention of making fuel.
He estimates he has sold at least 35,000 gallons of the stuff in the past year and a half. It currently sells for around $3.49 cents per gallon, a price that’s become more competitive as conventional fuel costs have increased.
“Generally with diesel vehicles you get considerably better fuel economy,” he added. “It’s significantly less pollution and there’s no dependence on foreign oil.”
Sales at the San Lorenzo Valley outlet slowed a bit this spring when biodiesel came to the pumps at a Mid-County service station.
In June, the USA station on Soquel Avenue began selling the fuel. It’s available as a blend of 20-percent biodiesel mixed with regular diesel, and a 99-percent biodiesel blend called B99.
“We are selling them 4,000 gallons about every week,” said Richard Gillis of Energy Alternative Solutions in Watsonville, which supplies the station with biodiesel.
Energy Alternative Solutions is the main importer of biodiesel to Santa Cruz County, and distributes it with the cooperation of Pacific Biofuels. Since the fuel is considered “experimental” in California, you have to complete a short form before buying it at the pump. The form makes you part of a special user group, or fleet, and it includes some cautions for consumers.
The opening of a new biodiesel outlet on Ocean Street is particularly good news for users because the USA station was recently sold to Chevron. The sale has some wondering if the station’s biodiesel pumps will continue to flow.
Brewing Your Own Fuel
While some industrious biofuel users brew it in their own backyards, there is currently no ASTM-certified producer of biodiesel in Santa Cruz County. But Gillis and Sack both say their companies are ready to set up commercial production systems.
Pacific Biofuels’ facility in Moss Landing has a pilot plant that produces 3,000 to 8,000 gallons a year, and they are designing a much larger system.
At the same time, Energy Alternative Solutions is expecting to take delivery of a production system in December that could produce a million gallons per year. Gillis said they are working out permit details with the City of Watsonville and plan to install it at the Lee Road facility of their partner company, Coast Oil.
The processing plant, built by a company in Hawaii, will process yellow grease. The grease is refined from used cooking oil recycled from restaurants and food processing plants. The grease may contain canola, safflower or soybean oil, depending on what the food processor was using.
Gillis says there is a plentiful supply of the recycled grease.
“There’s like four billion gallons of that produced in the US every year,” he said.
At times, his plant may also use virgin canola or safflower oil. Soybean oil, though a good raw material, has become prohibitively expensive due to high demand.
Eventually, Alternative Energy Solutions plans to install a second processing plant in the Salinas Valley, ensuring that the Central Coast is well supplied with the alternative fuel.
For the moment, they import biodiesel from Texas in rail cars, averaging 27,000 gallons per week.
Gillis recognizes that even a million gallons makes scarcely a dent in the state’s consumption of diesel, which is about 4.4 billion gallons a year. But he believes that will begin to change in the next decade. And there are other reasons to make the switch.
“We are doing this because 50,000 kids in the state every year come up with some kind of asthma because of [pollution] particulates in the air,” Gillis said.
He cited a Yale University study that tested children’s exposure to school bus diesel fumes by placing sensors in their backpacks.
“They found 60 percent more exposure to emissions [for children who take the bus to school] inside the bus than standing outside,” he added.
Schools Already Piloting Alternative Fuel Buses
Two of the County’s largest school districts are already running biodiesel in a trial group of buses. Sack said that Santa Cruz City Schools is pumping 99-percent blend into a half-dozen buses this year.
Pajaro Schools are on board as well, according to District Transportation Supervisor Mary Hoagland. She said they are trying it for six months to see if a larger conversion would be feasible. One of the district’s full-size buses and another short bus are currently running biodiesel.
“We did have a couple mechanical problems but we have really old buses so I don’t know that it’s caused by the biodiesel,” Hoagland said.
Some district buses are between 25 and 30 years old.
Old vehicles are subject to one of the few mechanical problems that can arise with biodiesel. Since the alternative fuel is a solvent, it can free up residue from normal diesel that has built up in tanks and fuel lines over the years.
“When you first start using biodiesel it breaks down and gets into the fuel filter,” Sack explained. “We recommend that folks monitor it for the first few tanks.”
It’s usually a simple fix, and from then on, the vehicle runs cleaner.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, it can be a lot cleaner.
A 100-percent blend releases 67 percent less smog-forming hydrocarbons and 48 percent less carbon monoxide. The 20-percent blend slashes hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide by 20 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
Though nitrogen oxides, another type of ozone forming pollutant, may slightly increase, the hydrocarbons in biodiesel form about half the ozone of normal diesel. And on top of that, there’s also a 47 percent reduction in particulate matter from exhaust emissions.
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