Making Biodiesel

“It will take time before biodiesel replaces petroleum; it is a question of when, not if. Hawai‘i has a possibility to become a fossil fuel free economy.”

That’s according to president of Pacific Biodiesel Inc. Robert King yesterday who presented a seminar at the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics.

Soaring fuel costs motivated a search for an alternative to petroleum. Biofuels are being hailed by politicians around the globe as an escape from high oil prices and climate change.

“Farm policy equals foreign policy,” King said, “as we have to do business with countries we don’t want to do business with. Better to do it at home.”

In 2000 Pacific Biodiesel, Inc. built a biofuel plant in Honolulu. The plant has a capacity of 25,000 gallons per day of grease trap waste and 1500 gallons of biodiesel per day. The fuel produced in Hawai‘i by Pacific Biodiesel, Inc. is used mostly in commercial diesel equipment, vehicles, and marine vessels.

“We live on an island that is largely dependent on imports to sustain,” King said, “which is a result of the centralized petroleum industry. I believe every community should have an opportunity to use its own resources to make its own energy and lessen their petroleum dependency.”

Biodiesel is a renewable fuel made by alcohol chemically reacting with vegetable oils, fats or greases. Through a refinery process called transesterification, the reaction of the oil with an alcohol removes the glycerin — a byproduct, which can then be made into soap, King explained.

Part of what makes biodiesel interesting is that it can be made from many natural sources, such as recycled cooking oil, vegetable, soy, rapeseed, sunflower, canola, coconut and hemp oil. Even animal fats like beef tallow and fish oil can be used.

Because it is made from easily obtainable plant-based materials, biodiesel is a completely renewable fuel source.

“Since we started Pacific Biodiesel Inc. in 1996,” King said, “we have been producing local fuel from used cooking grease collected from Maui’s restaurants and hotels. Our business became the answer to grave concerns over potential environmental and health problems resulting from restaurant grease clogging landfills.”

Driving diesel vehicles on vegetable oil is not a new concept. Rudolph Diesel designed an engine to run on refined peanut oil in the 1890s. He saw the development of a biomass industry as the key to future transportation. However, due to the availability of cheap petroleum, it was largely ignored.

Diesel wanted to advance the efficiency of the steam engine as well as keep the world’s struggling agriculture industry alive in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, but petroleum took that idea away; the thought of biodiesel as potential fuel fell into non-existence.

King also talked about the benefits of biodiesel during the seminar, which include landfill reduction, less visible smoke and noxious odors, and cutting down on tail pipe and targeted emissions. Biodiesel is a domestic non-toxic, biodegradable and non-flammable product and its cost is competitive with diesel.

“Biodiesel is safer, cleaner, and also easier on engines than petroleum diesel,” King said. “It will significantly reduce the carcinogenic sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter emissions that cause global warming.”

King’s vision of the future is to have a community system, where oil does not have to be shipped across the planet.

“Community scale modeling would benefit everyone,” he said. “The money you would spend to fill your tank will stay in the community and establish a sustainable agriculture system. I am an idealist pulling for the little guy and for the community.”

For automobiles, the best alternative according to King, is biodiesel since it can be used in existing slightly modified diesel engines.

“When we do not want to do business with these countries anymore or when we actually do not have any more fossil fuels,” King said, “Second, when we just can’t burn anymore — climate change is real.”

Alternative fuel will not only decrease the nation’s dependency on foreign oil, but will also stimulate the economy and clean up the environment.

“The stone age didn’t end when we ran out of stones,” King said. “The oil age is not going to end when we run out of oil.”

This entry was posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 9:03 am and is filed under Biodiesel Fuel, Biodiesel News, Making Biodiesel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.