FloridaTreeHugger

In the not to distant future, the fishing boats down at Fisherman’s Wharf may all smell like French fries. With all the talk about the oil drilling controversy and whether or not a viable replacement for the stuff will even be possible in our lifetimes, one local fisherman has already answered that question for himself - by converting his engine to run off biodiesel fuel. Made from vegetable oil, the fuel is either purchased from biodiesel retailers or distributors (of which there are hundreds across the country, and that number is growing) or ‘home-brewed’.  Captain Ramsey Drummond went to a seminar in Orlando to learn how to make his homebrew, and other fishermen are interested.
I spoke with Lee County Director of Solid Waste Lindsay Sampson, and Commissioner Ray Judah, who told us that Lee County is looking into ways to produce the stuff for use in its fleet of vehicles.

Biodiesel (or biofuel) is defined as “the name for a variety of ester-based fuels made from vegetable oils, such as soybean oil, canola or hemp oil, or sometimes from animal fats through a simple transesterification process.” This renewable source is as efficient as petroleum diesel in powering an unmodified diesel engine.
The concept of using vegetable oil to power diesel engines is not a new one.
In fact, Rudolf Diesel originally developed his diesel engine to run on peanut oil - demonstrating this at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900. He firmly believed the utilization of a biomass fuel to be the real future of his engine, and wanted to provide farmers the opportunity to produce their own fuel.
“The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it”, he said in 1911. Unfortunately, his untimely death in 1913 allowed the rapidly developing petroleum industry to produce a cheap byproduct called diesel fuel, powering a modified diesel engine, and clean vegetable oil was quickly forgotten as a source of power. Until, that is, our current situation.
Lindsay Sampson told me that, with all the focus on the high cost of fuel, people are once again looking at vegetable oil as a source, and that he did a lot of research into the subject a year and a half ago when the idea was broached of switching many of the county’s vehicles over to the stuff.
“Most of the retailers that I’m aware of for biodiesel are in areas like the Panhandle and southern Alabama where there are a fair amount of soybeans from which to make the oil,” Lindsay began. “So we knew that, here in south Florida, the toughest part would be procuring the material.
The best place we found to get it was from all the restaurants and folks like that who generated used vegetable oil. Unfortunately, many of them are locked into contracts where they turn that stuff over to companies who use it to make pet food,” he explained.
“However, I had a grant from the state to build a facility to turn the used vegetable oil into Biodiesel, and I was ready to hit ‘em hard, getting the restaurants to contact with us.”
According to Mr. Sampson, the idea was quashed when private business owners started showing up at County Commission meetings, saying that government needed to stay out of the fuel making business.
“Some of them went so far as to say that even if we were given the opportunity, we wouldn’t do a good job,” Lindsay exclaimed. “As if running a state of the art Waste to Energy facility wasn’t proof enough!”
Lindsay told me that Commissioner Judah is still behind the idea, but he fears that, by now, most of the restaurants are already locked into contracts.
“Some of the small Mom and Pop places may still be open, but the ‘grease buying’ business would be hard to break into now,” he said. “You would have to give these restaurants some incentive to leave their other companies. You would have to compete on price or quality of service. We were going to go after the service aspect - promise them we’d keep the oil areas clean.”
I wanted to know if it was even worth all the trouble.
“Definitely!” Lindsay said. “For every gallon of biofuel you use, that’s one less gallon of something that’s not renewable. We made about 600 gallons of the stuff to try on our trucks, and while we did mix it with regular diesel - making a blend of 30% biodiesel to 70% diesel, it ran our engines with no problems. If you think about the fact that, at a bare minimum, Lee County uses 2 ½ million gallons of diesel fuel a year, any portion of that that doesn’t have to come from fossil fuels would make an impact.”
Mr. Sampson also talked about the possibility of biofuels coming from the Jatropha plant.     “Jatropha plants, which are non-invasive to this area, produce ‘nuts’ from which fuel can be extracted,” he said. “The only problem is, the ‘nuts’ don’t all ripen at the same time, making harvesting a problem.”
Lindsay believes that the County will come up with a way to use biofuels, “But it will take someone with an entrepreneurial spirit and capital to make it viable. I’m not the person with the knowledge to know, but all I know is that it will take a real effort.”
spoke with Commissioner Ray Judah, and he told me that the County has in fact, in the last year, gone ahead with the proposal process, working with the private sector to build the facility that Mr. Sampson spoke of. “Right now, the staff at Solid Waste is reviewing the proposals,” said Mr. Judah. “Of course, the important thing is making sure we have a reliable source of grease from area restaurants. Some of the proposers have said they can make a commitment to provide us with that source, and one of them actually has a working relationship with Hooters.”
Commissioner Judah stated that the goal of the program is to start with oil from area restaurants but eventually segue into growing fields of Jatropha trees so that the oil can be gotten from them.
“In my vision, I’d like us to work with the agricultural industry to start to grow Jatropha on a large scale basis so we can rely on oil from the trees,” he said. “We would produce biodiesel from restaurant grease as a supplement for 3 to 4 years until the trees reach maturity.” Mr. Judah said that this provides an added bonus to the agricultural industry in that they can replace unproducing citrus trees with Jatropha.
I asked about the problems with harvesting that Mr. Sampson mentioned. “I just returned from visiting a 25 acre Jatropha field yesterday,” Judah told us. “And we learned that, through proper pruning and agricultural practices, the trees can be brought to maturity at the same time. Another thing that we’ve been studying with these trees is the fact that they don’t require much water, making them especially desirable in drought situations. There also don’t appear to be any injurious insects associated with these plants.”
Plenty of sites exist on the Internet giving instruction in ‘home-brewing’ one’s own biodiesel, but it has to be done correctly to work, which is what worries some of the captains down at Fisherman’s Wharf.
Captain Kenney Pearson is interested, though. His boat is bigger than Drummond’s, and he says he doesn’t have the time to make the ‘homebrew’ Ramsey uses (he gets his used vegetable oil from Bonita Bill’s), but if someone were to make it for him, he’d buy it.
“He’s definitely doing it right,” said Pearson, as the season’s first crisp autumn breeze blew off the back bay, “Some people I know tried it and didn’t process it right so it gummed up their engines, but he’s doing just fine. His engines run cleaner and smoother, too.”
Captain Kenney said that a man stopped by ‘the other day’ and told him that he could make the stuff for him. “I’m going to have Captain Ramsey check it out, and it’s the same stuff he’s using, I’m going to buy it,” he said. “I like how economical it is and how there’s no sulphur smoke. Plus, if you stand behind his boat, it smells like French fries!”
Keri Hendry, orginally published in the Island Sand Paper, September 26, 2008