SEPTEMBER 2009 - Association of Marina Industries

Clean Marina & Environmental News Continued from Page 12
You can make biodiesel yourself. It requires equipment,
chemicals and know-how, but it really isn’t all that more
complex than making soap, or brewing beer, or a many other
technical hobbies. You can also buy biodiesel commercially,
but you can expect to pay a premium for the “save the earth”
marketing and the limited supply. While you can read a lot
about biodiesel, getting your hands on some can be difficult.
In fact, if you go to a biodiesel producer’s web site, you may
find that many don’t actually tell you where to buy the stuff,
or how much it costs, but you will read loads and loads about
how great it is, and they will often have t-shirts!
Realistically, if the whole world switched to biodiesel tomorrow,
we’d run out in nanoseconds. So, assuming you can
find biodiesel in some fuel boutique, and you’re willing to
pay as much or more for it than regular petro-diesel, it will
theoretically run in almost any existing marine engine. It
will void your warranty, if you have one, and possibly cause
some long-term problems as well. You see, biodiesel, while
it’s standardized to a degree, and is being tested regularly,
just isn’t quite proven yet over the long term. The problems
that have surfaced with its use so far, however, are minimal.
The biggest problem is that Biodiesel is a great solvent. It
will take all of the old petrodiesel junk in your tank and
lines, and will bring it right to your filters, so in an older
We Are All Feeling the Effects
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15
diesel fuel system, they’ll need to be changed often. Biodiesel
will also soften and finally dissolve natural rubber
hoses and seals. So, some say that you need to replace all
lines, gaskets and seals with synthetics BEFORE you run
biodiesel. On the other hand, many people who have converted
to biodiesel say you should just start using it, change
your filters often, and then replace the hoses/seals/gaskets
WHEN you need to, since the softening process is slow,
and may not ever happen.
The Final Analysis
Let’s say you have a sailboat with a 35hp diesel engine that
you use to get into and out of your slip, or when the wind
dies. You probably run the motor for less than 100 hours a
year, and that means you probably burn less than 50 gallons
of petrodiesel doing that. At even $4 per gallon, you’re only
looking at $200 per year, and the cost of converting to another
fuel is not likely to ever make sense to you. If you just
want to do it to save the planet, sorry, but the environmental
costs of producing and shipping the conversion equipment
- even if it’s just hoses - will still probably be more than your
current environmental impact. Also, all of the unburned fuel
will rot at some rate - that’s what bio-degradable means. So,
going bio on a sailboat probably isn’t strictly practical, but
the same could be said about owning a sailboat.
Now, on the other hand, let’s say you have a powerboat
with twin diesels that burn more like 30 gallons an hour
(or more), and you go through 1,000 gallons per year (or
more). Converting to biodiesel would have a real effect on
your vessel’s environmental impact, and you would likely
use enough of it to keep it fresh in the tanks. If you converted
to used vegetable oil, you’d also save that $4,000 a year in
fuel costs (assuming you have a lot of fried food restaurants
lined up). In this case, as long as the engines are past warranty
anyway, converting to biofuels might be very practical
for both the environment and your wallet. Of course, in
a commercial application, being able to advertise that the
boat is bio-powered might actually EARN money.
There’s more to all this than global warming and fuel costs.
Spilled bio-fuels are less toxic to marine life, there is less
soot produced by bio-engines, and both the exhaust and
the fuel itself are safer to you and your crew. Using bio-fuels
lessens your dependence on the oil companies and overseas
interests like OPEC, and if you or your crew are sensitive
to the smell of diesel, you can get rid of the stink without
an expensive re-powering. It will all really come down to
a personal choice, but suffice it to say that the choice now
exists. Bio-fuels on boats are now a viable alternative, and
as fuel prices increase, they will become the budget option
for more and more mariners.