BY ROGER HANNEY

If, like me, you drive a standard passenger vehicle, you may wonder why Biodiesel is worth getting excited about. Perhaps you live on Planet Earth….

The man behind the first dedicated Biodiesel station to open in Sydney is Morris Lyda. Like Willie Nelson, a major force behind biofuels in America, Morris is a Texan rock ‘n’ roller.

One of the more accomplished production managers in the US, Lyda toured with such well-known artists as Pink Floyd, David Bowie and The Three Tenors, ran a 110 truck Disney show through East Asia, and began the Noughties as technical director of the Sydney 2000 Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

“I’ve been involved in gross abuses of energy for many, many years and moved from entertainment which is what I was doing when I was doing Disney to power generation, where I got into really, really burning some fuel.”

By ‘burning some fuel’, he’s talking about delivering emergency power plants for US company Alstom Power Rentals - chewing through a billion litres of fuel in four months. Over 30 years of diesel dependency has convinced Lyda of the detrimental impact of traditional fuel on the environment.

“The per capita production of transport emissions in Australia is amongst the highest in the world,” he said, and the figures agree.

In Australia, only one vehicle in ten runs on diesel. Despite this, they consumed a staggering 15 billion litres, close to 45% of all petrol used in this country, last year.

“The exhaust from diesel is unhealthy, at best, and carcinogenic at the worst,” Lyda said.

“Biodiesel is not toxic; it is biodegradable, reduces Greenhouse Gas emissions and is renewable.  Those are my foremost reasons for using biodiesel. It also conserves what precious little fossil fuel reserves are still left in the ground.”

Research by the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), among many other bodies, supports this position. As a substance, they found Biodiesel to be one tenth as toxic as table salt and more biodegradable than sugar. They have even used it to remediate petrol spills.

By comparison to standard diesel, the EPA also found that using Biodiesel in engines produced 67% less hydrocarbons, 48% less carbon monoxide, and 47% less particulate matter. Significantly in an era of global warming, every tonne of Biodiesel used also saves over 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

To add to the fairytale, on average every unit of energy put into producing biodiesel returned 3.2 units of energy. By contrast, for every unit of energy used locating, extracting, refining and developing petrodiesel, only 0.9 units of energy were returned.

In Australia, Biodiesel is currently produced by the transestrification of recycled vegetable oils and animal fats and, when blended with petrodiesel, is completely compatible with standard diesel engines.  Typically Biodiesel is blended in ratio of 20 per cent Biodiesel to 80 per cent petrodiesel (B20), or B50, a 50/50 blend.

Lyda explained that because of Biodiesel’s qualities as a solvent, B100 removes the deposits and waxes left from petrodiesel. New users need to change their fuel filter after the first tank, then maintain their vehicle normally. Unless the operator has attended a B100 orientation, it is recommended to use B20 or B50. Given its lubricating characteristics, many users find Biodiesel actually improves engine performance while decreasing wear.

While the Federal Government has set a 2012 target of 350 million litres for all biofuels, including ethanol-enriched unleaded petrols like E10, Australian producers are already on target to destroy that goal on their way to setting new ones.

The two main producers are Australian Renewable Fuels (ARF) and Australian Biodiesel Group (ABG). ARF will shortly be opening a plant capable of producing 44 million litres each year in South Australia, with another to follow in Western Australia by May. ABG, meanwhile, already has a 40 million litre facility at Berkleyvale in New South Wales, with a 160 million litre facility about to open in Queensland at Narangba. Biodiesel production capacity across Australia is expected to exceed 600 million litres by late 2007.

“Well, the new premier,” says Morris of his NSW namesake, “I take my hat off to him. He delivered an address in November; he mandated that State vehicles would have to use renewable fuels if they were available. He’s been fairly proactive about pushing renewable fuels and diminishing the requirement for offshore resources.”

In NSW alone, the annual resource of recyclable fats and oils could support an estimated 160 million litres of biodiesel production before resorting to agricultural feed stocks.

Abroad, biodiesel and other biofuels are based in traditional dependency on crops like canola and soy - the latter, along with palm oil, increasingly linked to massive deforestation. But in Australia, researchers have been seeing good preliminary results from crops like Mallee and Jatropha – currently listed as a noxious weed. Accustomed to arid conditions, these plants provide more than just a renewable fuel source – they actually regenerate saline soils.

“In the U.S. and Europe it’s going to pretty difficult to get the agricultural lobbies off the biodiesel cow,” said Lyda, “in Australia it’s pretty easy to demonstrate – you’ve got useless land with no irrigation, I can give you a crop that’ll rehabilitate the land and make you some money. I can see that going a long ways.”

Equally exciting results are coming from America’s highest ranked graduate school.  Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been achieving extraordinary outcomes from algae that feed on power plant emissions.

Not only do they provide the necessary oils for low-emission renewable fuel, but they significantly reduce greenhouse gases and pollution from the chimneys that feed them. The process, developed by Cambridge’s GreenFuel Technologies, is more realistic than alternate crops which would require land mass equivalent to the size of the United States just to meet that country’s energy needs.

For Australia, introducing even a 5 per cent blend of Biodiesel into the fuel chain would reduce import dependency, save close to 3 billion tones of carbon dioxide emissions per annum, and encourage, even create, new domestic industry. This could strengthen the economy by many millions of dollars annually.

Lyda hopes to open another seven stations throughout Sydney this year, with increased sales to local councils, government, and company fleets. The addition of ethanol pumps for non-diesel vehicles is scheduled for the medium-term. Biodiesel is currently costing motorists anywhere from 4 to 12 cents less per litre than petrodiesel, and you don’t need a coupon.

See also www.sydneybiodiesel.com, www.biodiesel.org, www.arfuels.com, www.abgbiodiesel.com , or visit The Biodiesel Station at the corner of Marrickville & Sydney Roads