DOE Says 89% of Biodiesel Met Standards In 2006; Trucking Calls Rate Unacceptable
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the April 14 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Nearly 90% of the biodiesel available for sale in the United States meets the established standards for quality, an improvement over past surveys but still an unacceptable situation for trucking, a new report by the Department of Energy said.
The report, released in late March, found that “based on the samples [tested], 89.6% of the biodiesel was on specification.” The previous study, conducted in 2006, showed that only 59% of samples met the federal standards, the report said.
Despite the improvement, some in the trucking industry remained concerned about quality.
“Ten percent of biodiesel sold in the United States does not meet ASTM standards, and that can cause very real problems for motor carriers considering using bio-diesel,” said Rich Moskowitz, regulatory affairs counsel for American Trucking Associations.
“Low-percentage blends of high-quality biodiesel are an acceptable alternative fuel for the trucking industry. However, biodiesel that does not meet those standards creates the very real possibility that trucks could be stranded on the side of the road,” Moskowitz said.
DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory tested 56 samples from different producers, or just more than half of all producers of biodiesel. Those samples, the report said, “represented 70% of the U.S. market in 2007, or 278 million gallons” of biodiesel.
The researchers found that the size of a biodiesel producer and its ability to get certified in a national quality control program were key factors in determining if the product met federal standards.
“Large producers and BQ-9000 producers hardly ever failed to meet the specifications,” the report said. “Small and medium producers had significant failure rates; however, combined, they account for only approximately 11% of the market by volume.”
Of the 17 samples taken from producers certified as BQ-9000, a national biodiesel quality accreditation, the report said that all but one passed, and that one sample failed to meet the standard for “water and sediment specification, indicating
that contamination of the sample was likely.”
“We are quite pleased with the increases in in-spec fuel in 2007,” said Amber Thurlo Pearson, spokeswoman for the National Biodiesel Board. “Of course, we continue to strive for 100% quality, but the 90% in-spec fuel that they found is a good representative sample in the U.S., and it is quite an increase in-spec fuel from the previous year.”
“Biodiesel is very easy to make, but high-quality biodiesel is very difficult to produce on a consistent basis,” ATA’s Moskowitz said. “Larger producers that have embraced quality-control mechanisms have produced high-quality biodiesel on a consistent basis, but small producers of biodiesel that do not invest in high-quality feedstocks or technology to control quality have failed to produce an acceptable product.”
When biodiesel does not meet accepted standards, it can cause blocked fuel lines and filters, and it has caused problems for trucking companies using the fuel, notably in Minnesota (1-23-06, p. 1).
Pearson told Transport Topics the NBB was working with state enforcement groups to better monitor biodiesel quality.
