Senators call on Obama to promote biofuels
June 27, 2010 at 2:22 am in Alexandria Echo Press
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and seven other senators sent a letter to President Obama Thursday calling on his administration to move urgently in promoting the integration of biofuels into the transportation fuel supply. Continue Reading
Practicality be damned, eh Amy?
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Go Amy, go Amy!!!
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I’m all for utilizing our homegrown fuels and there is a sense of urgency to get off of oil when practicable, but I didn’t read in the story that the testing of biofuels was being delayed. I hope our Senator doesn’t want the DOE to rush the testing prior to allowing it to be put into our energy supply. Let the testing be done correctly and if it proves to be good, then move forward, but don’t rush it to the point of shoddy work.
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There are a few problems with this that nobody seems to want to address. Pawlenty himself admitted that it requires more fossil fuel to produce ethanol than it is worth. That is why the whole thing has to be funded with taxpayer money to keep the ethanol people in business. Also any trucker will tell you that bio diesel is a complete nightmare because it gels up in winter in the big rigs. This causes truckers to try to fuel up whenever possible in neighboring states that do not require it’s addition to transportation fuels. Our home fuel supply person informed us that a company selling fuel oil for home heating has to have a 10 thousand gallon tank in which to store seperate home heating fuel that does not require the addition of soy. For this reason they are delivering over the road fuel with bio as home heating fuel. Furnaces are NOT manufactured to burn bio diesel. The fire pot gets full of a rock like substance and require constant maintanence to keep burning. We have the bills and the frozen pipes to prove it!
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I wonder if that’s legal, LL.L? Sure wouldn’t think so! If it’s not, it certainly should be. At best, I’d say it’s unethical.
As to ethanol, from what I’ve been hearing, the only plant in the state that’s really doing well is the one that’s making the expensive vodka. (Princeton??)
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It probably isn’t illegal but it is not right. What they do is sell the dyed stuff that is not for over the road use–the kind that is used in tractors etc. and that is what they call home heating fuel but it has the bio diesel in it. Regular home fuel does not require the addition of bio. Problem is that they have take large amounts and don’t have any place to store it. We were furious! Tried to find a place that has storage capacity but it appears that they are all doing the same thing. During the heating season they can evidently go someplace and get the clean fuel but then the price is off the wall with the added transportation cost. Once they went all the way to the Cities to bring us a fill. For crying outloud!
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Sounds like there’s a few companies that are trying to get by on the cheap at the customer’s expense. Might be a good question for the Better Business Bureau?
I heated with #2 oil years ago, and was told that the stuff for home heating was completely different than the ‘road’ fuel. I’m certain that Carleton told me that the home fuel was undyed.
Now, I’m just wondering what that soy stuff is doing to your tank filter? Think that would clog it faster than the paraffin in #2 did.
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LL.L, I just spent some time researching bio, and from what I found, it’s likely that you got too high a %age of the stuff the first time around.
Every place I looked said that you should start out with about a 5% bio blend, because the bio will dissolve the crud in your tank and lines. After that, you can go up to as much as 30% bio and should see some substantial savings.
The other drawbacks were, keep an extra filter or two on hand, and check the rubber gaskets in the pump, replace them with neoprene or some other synthetic, since the bio tends to eat natural rubber.
Otherwise, it’s supposed to work just fine with the nozzle that worked with plain #2. (might want to see if you’ve got the right one installed, I found that the one that came w/ my used furnace years ago was .025 oversized)
So, maybe what caused that buildup was all the paraffin that was stuck to the inside of your tank got dissolved by the bio, and ended up in the firepot?
Just a guess, but your ‘furnace guy’ might have been wrong.
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The state does not require one single drop of bio in home heating fuel. Furnaces are not designed to burn bio. It does not burn clean in a furnace but leaves a rock like substance on the inside of the furnace firepot and all kinds of soot.. There is no excuse to be burning anything with bio. Yes, over the road fuel has all kinds of aditives that also do not belong in home heating oil.
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Yes it gums up the filters and it gels up in cold weather. I burn #1 fuel oil and there is NO excuse for it to have additives. #1 is pretty much poorer grade of kerosene. Bio diesel has no place in #1 fuel oil. They are substituting garbage.
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