Fuel of the Future

The technology that is being developed to produce ethonal will be a huge part of our future.

"Allison, of Silverton, filled up his 1985 Volkswagon Golf for the first time last week on biodiesel, a fuel made from vegetable oil that is touted as an environmentally friendly way to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.In addition to Allison’s car, biodiesel has found its way into many more vehicles on Oregon roads this year.“In the state of Oregon, we used about 1 million gallons (of biodiesel) on roads last year,” said Tyson Keever, a managing partner for biodiesel distributor SeQuential Biofuels. “This year, we are scheduled to double, if not triple it.”Salem is adding fuel to this new trend.Two stations and a production facility opened in Salem this year, making the capital one of the most biofuel-friendly communities in Oregon.Biodiesel is any liquid biofuel suitable as a diesel-fuel substitute or diesel-fuel additive and it typically is made from oils such as soybeans, grapeseeds or sunflowers, according to the federal Department of Energy.“Until (this station opened), I was going up to Portland with four 5-gallon tanks and filling up every three to four weeks,” said Sydney Levin, while filling her 1985 Mercedes Wagon at Marc Nelson Oil Products in Salem. “Now I can just come here.”Marc Nelson Oil Products on Claxter Road NE opened the biodiesel fuel station in June, and the first Salem biodiesel cooperative, where members join to have access to the 275-gallon biodiesel tank, opened in August.SeQuential Biofuels and Pacific Biodiesel opened a joint refinery in South Salem to process used cooking oil for running diesel-fueled cars.“It is a little bit of a trend with the price of fuel going up and (biofuels) being environmentally friendly,” said Peter Nelson of Marc Nelson Oil Products. “There is a niche market for it.”Straight biodiesel can reduce particulate emissions — linked to asthma and other respiratory diseases — by 50 percent compared with regular diesel.Carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons also are reduced with the use of biodiesel, said Kevin Downing of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.Although actual tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide increase with biodiesel, petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel put more carbon into the atmosphere because they otherwise would be stored in the earth, Downing said.Marc Nelson Oil Products sells both 20 percent biodiesel and 99 percent biodiesel.Right now, it is only a small fraction of their total sales; in two months, MNOP sold about 12,000 gallons of biodiesel compared with 3 million gallons of other fuels in one month.Biodiesel in Oregon is also a small percentage of total diesel fuel. In 2003, 126 million gallons of diesel fuel was consumed in the state compared with less than one million gallons of biodiesel.But for those in the biodiesel business, the future looks bright. Diesel costs about $2.98 a gallon and biodiesel is about $3.25, so people are noticing the vegetable-based fuel more. And experts say that biodiesel lubricates engine parts, extending the life of vehicles."


"To study the potential effects of increased biofuel use, we evaluated six representative analyses of fuel ethanol. Studies that reported negative net energy incorrectly ignored coproducts and used some obsolete data. All studies indicated that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline. However, many important environmental effects of biofuel production are poorly understood. New metrics that measure specific resource inputs are developed, but further research into environmental metrics is needed. Nonetheless, it is already clear that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology. "

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