While Rudolf Diesel made many accurate predictions in his lifetime, one prophecy that the father of the diesel engine didn’t make was that the heart of the petroleum producing industry would one day become an area of political instability and turmoil. Recent developments in the Middle East have underscored the importance of energy independence, which has helped spur a comeback for vegetable-based fuels. Although these fuels lost the first round to petroleum when it came to the first diesel engines, it appears that they are staging a rally. In the span of just a few years, a small but significant biofuels industry has established itself in this country, and it has come to bear on diesel RVing in the form of biodiesel.

What It Is

“In non-technical terms, biodiesel is a fuel that’s created from vegetable oils or animal fats using a fairly simple chemical reaction,” said Ian Hill, a managing partner of SeQuential Biofuels, an Oregon-based biodiesel distributor. “It can be used in most modern diesel engines without modifications, and it can be blended in any proportion with petroleum diesel.”

Nearly all biodiesel being manufactured today comes from two sources: waste vegetable oil (yellow grease) recycled from restaurants or virgin oil extracted from oilseed crops such as soybean, canola (rapeseed), sunflower, and mustard. Biodiesel refineries take the recycled grease or virgin oil, and then use a catalyst and an alcohol (such as methanol or ethanol) to remove the glycerin, which thins the oil into a liquid with a viscosity very close to petroleum diesel. The result is a clean burning, biodegradable fuel that is less toxic than table salt.

The biodiesel is then transported and sold as B100 (pure biodiesel) or as a fuel blended with petroleum diesel. Common blends are B99 (one percent petroleum), B20 (80 percent petroleum) or B5 (95 percent petroleum).

“One of the great things about biodiesel is its flexibility,” Hill said. “You can fill up your tank with biodiesel, but if you travel somewhere that biodiesel isn’t available and need to fill up, you can put in petroleum diesel. The two can be mixed in any percentage.”

Hill added that SeQuential has been running a Ford truck company vehicle on mostly B99 for over 150,000 miles without fuel system issues.

Biodiesel Boom
Biodiesel’s popularity has erupted in the last five years. “The growth of biodiesel has been...

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