[Editor's note: It is not the policy nor goal to support or endorse political parties, but we felt that recent news stories are of importance to the biodiesel community.]
 

'Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves, protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.

California Air Resources OKs World's Toughest Limits on Ship Exhaust
 

[Editor's note: Take two giant steps forward. Ships will need to find fuel that has lower emissions. The law does not say that the ships must run biodiesel - but using biodiesel would allow them to conform to the standard. Not only will this new policy demonstrate that California is very much a part of clean energy, it will set a precedence for other ports to follow. This could prove to be a huge boost for the Biodiesel industry everywhere.]
 

State air-quality officials approved the toughest-known restriction on ship emissions in the world Thursday, cutting the diesel exhaust that exposes millions of people along the California coast to harmful air pollution.

The measure, adopted by the state Air Resources Board, requires ships traveling within 28 miles of shore to replace heavy fuel oil with lower-sulfur products. About 2,000 ships call at California ports every year. "This regulation will save lives. At ports and all along the California coast, we will see cleaner air and better health," Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, said after a unanimous vote by 10 board members.

But the board is in for a fight from the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, which represents 60 ocean carriers and terminal operators on the West Coast. The group, which prefers a voluntary approach, blocked in court a previous state attempt to regulate vessel emissions. It also challenges the state's authority beyond its waters, which extend 3 miles from shore.

The shipping association wants to wait for the matter to come before the International Maritime Organization, the body that regulates international shipping, said T.L. Garrett, the association's vice president. "We're completely on board" with changing fuel and improving emissions," said Garrett. "The issue is who should be in charge of implementing that. We believe it should be the IMO and not the individual states." The maritime organization is scheduled to take up the matter in October, Garrett said.

Calling the new regulation the "most stringent and comprehensive requirement for marine-fuel use in the world," the Air Resources Board expects the switch in fuels to eliminate 15 tons of diesel exhaust a day, an 83 percent reduction in particulate emissions, by 2012.

The switch would reduce cancer risk and prevent 3,600 premature deaths between 2009 and 2015, the board said. Diesel exhaust contains harmful gases and more than 40 other carcinogenic compounds and can cause respiratory and cardiovascular disease, ranging from severe asthma and heart attacks to early death.

Starting in July 2009, the regulations would lower the sulfur content in fuel used in ships' main and auxiliary engines and boilers. By 2012, when the final phase goes into effect, particulate matter would be reduced by 83 percent, sulfur oxides by 95 percent and nitrogen oxides by 6 percent.

The fine for not using cleaner fuel would be $44,500 for the first violation and rise to $225,000 for five violations.

There would be additional costs to carriers and operators as they switch from the heavy bunker fuel, which is essentially a waste product of oil refining, to a cleaner marine fuel, state air officials said. The cost of the cleaner fuel is more than twice the cost of the heavy fuel oil.

A single call at a California port could cost carriers $30,000 more, which is about 1 percent of the cost of a transocean voyage, according to air board documents. To help offset this, passengers might pay $15 more on cruise ships from Los Angeles to Mexico.

For the past decade, the Air Resources Board has ratcheted down diesel emissions by prohibiting the prolonged idling of trucks and buses and putting new restrictions on off-road and cargo-handling equipment, transport refrigeration units and ships at berth.

This is the second time the state has tackled the polluting effects of heavy fuel oil in oceangoing vessels. The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association blocked the first regulation, approved in 2006, and others with the argument that the state needed a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate ship emissions. The shipping association's Garrett said his organization still takes that position. The maritime industry also challenges the state's authority to regulate ships beyond the state's 3-mile water boundary.

California argues that it has the authority.

Representatives of Friends of the Earth, Coalition for Clean Air and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have pushed for controls on ship emissions. Diane Bailey, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, praised the regulation as "the most significant port cleanup rule anywhere in the world. "This rule is going to drastically improve air quality and health in portside communities, and these are the places that really need relief from air pollution the most," she said.

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Biodiesel By-product Good for Your Heart

Researchers at Virginia Tech have found a way to grow a compound important to human heart health using a plentiful by-product of biodiesel production.

This press release from the school says Zhiyou Wen, assistant professor of biological systems engineering in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has found a way to grow omega-3 fatty acids, known for benefits but lacking in most Americans’ diets, using glycerol:

"High energy prices have led to an increase in biodiesel production, which in turn has led to an increase in the amount of crude glycerol in the market," said Wen, who explained that biodiesel plants leave behind approximately 10 percent crude glycerol during the production process.

This has led the price of glycerol, a chemical compound widely used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, to drop in recent years. The rise in biodiesel production over the last decade means that the market can no longer absorb all the extra glycerol. Biodiesel producers must find alternative means for disposing of crude glycerol, which is prohibitively expensive to purify for industry use. Wen and his colleagues have developed a novel fermentation process using microalgae to produce omega-3 fatty acids from crude glycerol

"We have shown that it is possible to use the crude glycerol byproduct from the biodiesel industry as a carbon source for microalgae that produce omega-3 fatty acids," said Wen, who added that the impurities in crude glycerol may actually be beneficial to algal growth. "After thorough chemical analysis, we have also shown that the algae biomass composition has the same quality as the commercial algae product."

The release goes on to say that the algae grown in the crude glycerol can be used as an animal feed, including fish and, possibly one day, poultry feed, giving the same omega-3 fatty acids to chicken that fish eaters enjoy.

Wen presented his findings at the recent at the 236th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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[Editor's note: Don't miss this.. its one of the best things we have seen in a long time. Although aimed at the technical side of production its a great resource, and very interesting reading.]

Penn State University has published the last two years work by the "Biodiesel Best Practices Committee." The Committee is a collection of academic, regulatory, and home brewing resources. The Goal of the project was to review accepted practices to make them better and safer and more environmentally friendly.

The title of the publication is, "Biodiesel Safety and Best Management Practices for Small-Scale Noncommercial Use and Production".

I would have put a more homey title on it. "How to make biodiesel at home and on the farm the right and safe way" Yep this is targeted squarely at home brewers and has a lot of good no nonsense advice for both the old hand and the beginner on how to make biodiesel legally and safely. It does discuss some Pennsylvania specific environmental regulations.

They are clearly identified in the publication and if you do not live in Pennsylvania, you will need to check with your state for specific regulations.

This is a great pub. A MUST READ for every home brewer of every experience level!

You can download the publication from: http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/agrs103.pdf

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Singer Willie Nelson spoke in Salem Friday at the opening of the expansion of a local biodiesel plant. Nelson is a longtime advocate of the alternative fuel.

The capacity of the plant, SeQuential Biofuels, has increased to 6 million gallons a year. Nelson also was there for the groundbreaking last year. He was scheduled to perform Friday night at the Oregon State Fair.

SeQuential was the first such plant in the state when it opened in 2005. The expansion was helped by a $6 million state loan.

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Two biodiesel companies on Inc. Magazine list

Two privately-held biodiesel industry companies have been named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the United States.

Larkspur, Calif.-based Greenline Industries, a manufacturer of biodiesel production equipment, was listed seventh on Inc.’s overall list and was the number one energy company for 2008. The company was also at the top of the 100 businesses in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif., list.

According to Inc. Magazine, Greenline has experienced a 10,000 percent growth rate since it was founded in 2002. In 2004, the company had $318,000 in revenue; in 2007, Greenline reported $35.1 million in revenue.

The only biodiesel producer to make the list was Golden, Co.-based Blue Sun Biodiesel. Of the 23 energy companies to make the top 500, Blue Sun ranked tenth. Overall, the company was ranked 242 on the top 500 list.

Blue Sun marketing director Steve Bond said the ranking proves that despite a tough year experienced by the biodiesel industry, companies can continue to grow. Blue Sun has enjoyed a 1,000 percent growth rate in the past three years and reported $14.1 million in revenue last year.

Bond attributes the company’s prosperous nature to its trademarked premium B20 biodiesel blend – Fusion. "We’re doing the right thing by having premium biodiesel fuel that people can trust for their vehicles," he said. "This shows this is the right path. People are responding to that." Bond told Biodiesel Magazine that Blue Sun plans to expand its business in 2009 to include locations in Nebraska, Colorado and other states in the western United States.

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Weed Could Feed Biodiesel

Morrisville State, Albany company study pennycress as source of oil for alternative fuel

For generations, farmers have done everything they could to get rid of pennycress, a fast-growing weed no more welcome than a plague of locusts. But makers of biodiesel may ask farmers to give the weed a second look.

Researchers from Morrisville State College have teamed up with a private biodiesel company to study whether pennycress, which produces seeds rich in oil, could be grown in Central New York as a feedstock for biodiesel.

Project organizers hope to show that pennycress could be planted in September and harvested by early June, leaving farmers time to grow corn or soybeans. If so, pennycress could provide farmers with extra income and avoid displacing food crops to make fuel, said Ray Cross, president of Morrisville.

"If, in fact, it can be a second crop in this climate, it's pretty attractive," he said. But don't invest in pennycress futures just yet.

Farmers in Illinois have successfully grown pennycress followed by another crop, but it's not clear whether the growing season here is long enough, Cross said. Questions also remain about how easy it will be to control the weed, how cheaply it can be grown and what the yields are. "I'm not too sure that I'm going to be successful with this, but it needs to be tested," Cross said.

Morrisville is pursuing the project with Innovation Fuels, of Albany, whose president, John Fox, is a Syracuse University graduate and whose chief operating officer, Joe Dickson, lives in Madison County. Innovation has been trying since 2007 to build biodiesel plants in Oswego County and in Washington County, on the Vermont border. But neither plant is near construction yet, Fox said.

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Students Complete Trans US Trip on Biodiesel

[Editor's note: We love to see this stuff. Its great publicity they are having a lot of fun and helping to promote the good name of biodiesel.]
 

Seth Keighley, of Foster, is met by his mom, Gail, left, and his godmother, Heather Dolan, of Providence, yesterday.

A pickup truck driven by a Ponaganset High School science teacher and three teens made it all the way to Los Angeles on recycled cooking oil. That’s because the oil had been converted to biodiesel, a fuel that will power current diesel engines without modification. "The vehicle handled really great," teacher Ross McCurdy said when the group marked its return to Rhode Island yesterday at Roger Williams Park. "We had one catastrophic problem," said Zane Lewis, a former Ponaganset student. "It was a headlight. We had to change it."

The foursome left Rhode Island two weeks ago with the truck’s tank full of biodiesel and three reserve tanks holding 250 gallons in the bed of the pickup. "That was plenty of fuel to get us all the way to California, right down to the water," said Wylie Smith, another former student. "We did this to demonstrate that biodiesel is a viable fuel that’s easy to use and it works and it’s reliable," said McCurdy.

"If we can drive across the country and back with no problems, you can put it in your car and drive to work, no problem, 10 miles," said Lewis. "Pretty much anybody with a diesel engine can use it."

McCurdy explained that the used cooking oil is treated with chemicals: methanol, a type of alcohol, and either sodium hydroxide, the main ingredient in drain cleaners, or potassium hydroxide. That removes the glycerin from the oil, allowing it to flow through a vehicle’s fuel system.

They made the coast-to-coast-to-coast trip in a 1997 GMC pickup truck that had been donated by Con Edison Solutions, an energy supplier with headquarters in White Plains, N.Y. The cab had two rows of seats, allowing two people to sleep in back while the other two drove and navigated. The trip turned out to be more than simply a demonstration of biodiesel, though. The travelers saw a big slice of America. "There were probably about 50 in ‘coolest things we saw,’ " said Lewis.

For him, one of the coolest things was one of the hottest: the deserts of the Southwest. "You put your hands outside of the truck, and it’s hotter than it is inside the truck, and that was about 100 inside the truck, maybe 110."

Among his favorites, Smith listed the Northern California coast. "You had the ocean, then you also had big pastures filled with cattle grazing, with horses, but then you also had the mountains behind you." Seth Keighley, who will be a senior at Ponaganset this year, was left virtually speechless by one stop. "Speed Week at Bonneville Salt Flats," he said. "Oh, man." The teens stood within a few feet of hotrods as they roared off the starting line and accelerated to speeds over 300 mph.

They even got to take the biodiesel truck out on the salt flats — a portion with a speed limit of 55.

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Biodiesel Business Plans
Info@biodieselbusinessplans.com / 415-261-1004 Local