Alberta group to conduct $2.6 million cold weather “iron man” biodiesel test, performance of 60 trucks will be measured

In Canada, Climate Change Central, an Alberta not-for-profit organization, will test 60 trucks in a $2.6 million cold weather biodiesel research project. The Canadian and Alberta governments, Shell Canada, the Canola Council of Canada, the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, Canadian Bioenergy, Neste Oil and Milligan BioTech are the project sponsors.

The experiment will explore the extent to which diesel and biodiesel fuel experience gelling at low temperatures. In Washington state, C-Tran, the Clark County transit service, switched to B5 from B20 due to gelling issues experienced with B20 when temperatures fell into the 30s. C-Tran’s fleet was unable to fully burn the fuel as a result and experienced power losses.

In Iowa, the Iowa Soybean Association recently completed year one of a multi-year study on the performance of B20 in trucks compared to regular diesel. Results from the first 1.5 million miles tested show no statistically significant change in mileage and no performance effects.

The study follows a string of recent conversions in the northeast. Last week, Montclair. NJ switched its 70-plus diesel-powered fleet and off-road equipment to B20 biodiesel. In New Hampshire, Cranmore Mountain Resort has reported that its fleet of trucks, which operate on B20, have experienced no problems relating to the effect of cold on biodiesel, at temperatures as low as minus 20 Fahrenheit. Cranmore is one of two New Hampshire ski resports that have converted to biodiessel. The other is Mount Sunapee Resort, which converted its snow grooming and snow removal equipment to B20 biodiesel. In Maryland, state highway officials said that they would convert snowplows to a B5 blend this season, and expect to convert their equipment to B20 in 2008-09.In Pennsylvania, 500 school buses in Chester County are converting to B20 biodiesel commencing in January.

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