CONTACTS: Chuck Peterson, UI Professor of Agricultural Engineering, (208) 885-7906, [email protected]; Jack Brown, UI associate professor of plant breeding and genetics, (208) 885-7078, [email protected]; Bill Loftus, UI Agricultural Communications, (208) 885-7694, [email protected]; Howard Haines, Montana Department of Environmental Quality, (406) 444-6773, [email protected], or Marsha Karle or Cheryl Matthews, Yellowstone National Park public affairs, 307-344-2013.
Editor's note: A photo of University of Idaho professors Charles L. Peterson and Jack Brown with a bright yellow Volkswagen New Beetle and a field of yellow canola blooms is available at www.ag.uidaho.edu/news. Further information is available at www.nps.gov/renew/yellbio.htm. A related story about University of Idaho biodiesel research is available at http://info.ag.uidaho.edu.
Idaho Biodiesel Pioneer Helped Fuel Greening Of Yellowstone Vehicles
MOSCOW, Idaho - The National Park Service now operates trucks, buses and boats on biodiesel in 22 national parks from Florida's Everglades to California's Channel Islands.
The use of diesel made from vegetable oil first took root in Yellowstone National Park and a cooperative experiment by the National Park Service, Montana Department of Environmental Quality and University of Idaho. One 1995 Dodge pickup became the vehicle that helped launch the greening of Yellowstone's truck fleet.
While the nation debates energy policy, new strides are being made to bring biofuels to Main Street, or the mall.
Charles L. Peterson, University of Idaho professor of agricultural engineering, has spent two decades studying the use of biodiesel as fuel. He has already helped convince some of the nation's most environmentally friendly drivers, Yellowstone National Park employees, that biodiesel works.
Howard Haines of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality first teamed up with UI biodiesel researchers after obtaining a grant to explore the alternate fuel's use.
Haines and Peterson visited Yellowstone in mid-June to join fleet operators in the three-state Yellowstone region to plan the expansion of biodiesel use. Peterson spoke at an ethanol conference and helped plan a national biofuels conference he is co-organizing with Idaho Water Resources Department officials next year at Boise.
Peterson traveled in a 2001 Volkswagen New Beetle with a diesel engine that he and fellow UI researcher Jack Brown bought as a demonstration vehicle and christened the Bio-Bug. It features one key difference - it runs on biodiesel made from mustard oil.
Yellowstone is a familiar destination for Peterson. He worked with the National Park Service and Montana Department of Environmental Quality to test how biodiesel would work in one of America's most scenic, and most challenging, environments.
The Dodge four-wheel-drive pickup showed biodiesel performed without a hitch. The team reported its findings after the pickup operated for 92,838 miles in a Society of Automotive Engineers publication.
The pickup's power did not decline nor did its engine suffer excessive wear from using biodiesel made from canola oil, said Jeffrey S. Taberski, Peterson and Joseph Thompson, all of UI, and Haines of Montana's DEQ in the 1999 report.
Emissions tests on the biodiesel pickup showed it generated fewer pollutants such as smoke, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, although particulate matter did increase. "It really eliminated a lot of air toxics with the catalytic converter," Haines said.
The tests were encouraging enough that the Park Service continues to run the truck on UI-produced biodiesel. Just before he left for his visit to the park, Peterson dispatched another biodiesel-powered UI pickup towing a tank of 800 gallons of biodiesel for the park's use.
A project by the Department of Energy and Yellowstone to expand the park's biodiesel fleet will mean the university will no longer be able to produce enough fuel to meet demands, indicating a new market niche. The university's biodiesel plant has worked with a variety of oil sources, including potato processing oils used to make French fries by the J.R. Simplot Co. It has converted oil from mustard, rapeseed and canola research by Brown, UI associate professor of plant breeding and genetics.
Brown is producing a new mustard variety with high concentrations of glucosinolates. His goal is the meal that remains after oil pressing. The seed meal can be spread on fields as a fumigant to kill nematodes, which are crop-damaging roundworms, and other pests.
The mustard oil is a byproduct, and that means it is cheaper, Brown noted. It also offers the advantage of burning cleaner than some other sources of biodiesel.
National Park Service officials have been so pleased with biodiesel that they have expanded its use to three specially marked buses and all seven garbage trucks in daily use.
Early plans called for sending the truck south during the frigid Yellowstone winters so the diesel could continue to operate, but the biodiesel worked out so well the park decided to run it in Yellowstone year-around.
The pickup now has 128,000 miles on it, and the original 100,000-mile project has been doubled. Now park buses run on it. So do garbage trucks. Biodiesel has proved itself a valuable fuel.
The 22 national parks now using biodiesel either mix it with conventional diesel as a 20-80 blend known as B20. Channel Islands National Park uses 100 percent biodiesel to power its boats.
The meeting will focus on expanding biodiesel use by other federal agencies in the Greater Yellowstone area of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.
At the Montana Ethanol Conference, Peterson will talk about plans for Bioenergy 2002, a national conference he is helping to organize at Boise.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Regional Bioenergy Program will sponsor the Boise conference, which is planned in September 2002. State bioenergy offices in Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Idaho will co-sponsor the event.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Initiative focuses on developing technologies, markets and policies to support use of energy from biomass.
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