Fill it up: Councillor Ben Smith pumps B20 Biodiesel fuel consisting of beef and mutton fat combined with soy beans and conventional diesel into one of the Council’s 100 vehicles.
BEEF and mutton fat is helping to keep 100 of Ballina Shire Council’s diesel-fuelled vehicles on the road.
Combined with soy beans and conventional diesel, the by-products of Australia’s meat processing industry are used in a new fuel called B20.
Ballina is the first council in the Northern Rivers to use biodiesel in its fleet.
Mayor Phillip Silver said the council wanted to encourage the other councils to consider it.
“Then we would be able to get our own production plant on the Northern Rivers,” he said.
“If we had four or five councils involved, then we would have enough critical mass to make it viable.
“It would be great for jobs, great for farmers and great for the community.”
Cr Ben Smith is a strong supporter of the use of tallow in biodiesel.
OK, maybe it’s not the drink of choice, but biodiesel is truly a fitting symbol for the 152nd birthday of Rudolf Diesel. Tomorrow, Thursday, March 18th, is the inventor’s birthday, and since he designed that first diesel engine to run on vegetable oil, the National Biodiesel Board is taking the day to recognize the role the clean-burning fuel has played in the past and will play in the future by designating the day as National Biodiesel Day:
“Biodiesel is currently the only advanced biofuel that is commercially available in the US; it’s the next generation of fuel, here now,” said National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe. “Rudolf Diesel originally designed diesel engines to use sustainable fuels. Today’s biodiesel is a modern application of his innovation.”
I did not know that the diesel engine was originally designed to run on veggie oil, did you? If you study history, you find that the idea of biodiesel is just what the original inventor of the diesel had in mind.
Photo from: http://pdxpipeline.com/tag/biodiesel/
Canada's largest biodiesel plant, which will crush 500,000 tonnes of canola seeds each year and supply about 25 per cent of national demand in 2012, should begin construction in Vegreville later this year.
The project is the first for Bio-Street, a Kelowna, B.C.-based firm that has been working for five years on the venture. But with the federal government demanding that Canadian diesel fuel must contain two per cent biodiesel by 2012, the project's timing suddenly makes economic sense.
"With these federal standards, that means there will be a demand for one billion litres. And some provinces are going further, with B.C. requiring five per cent biodiesel by 2012," vice-president Angela Reid told the Resource Industry Suppliers Association on Thursday.
"Our plant will produce 225 million litres, and will also produce canola meal, glycerine and potassium fertilizer."
An underestimation of the expected surge in emissions from oil-based fossil fuels could undermine the EU's climate goals, the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) warned yesterday (18 March). Greenhouse gas emissions from oil will reach record levels in future, according to a new study presented by the EBB. It urged the European Commission to take this into account in the implementation of its fuel quality and renewable energy directives so as not to give fossil fuels an advantage over other fuels. The research, carried out by environmental consultancy ERA, argued that more intensive use of existing oil fields is hiking emissions from conventional oil. In addition, the depletion of oil wells is reducing production of conventional oil, which must then be replaced by unconventional oil, the emissions from which are up to 2.5 times greater as a result of more energy-intensive extraction techniques.
This article considers the huge amount of energy it takes to get the crude oil out of the ground and refined, and it appears the math was not quite right. Compared to biodiesel from WVO, petrol is a filthy fuel for sure.