Fresh Cup Magazine February 2004

Fueling a Revolution
By Mark Inman

It goes without saying that the coffee industry is married to many forms of transportation. From the trucks, burros and busses that take coffee cherry from the farm to the mill, the trucks that take the finished green coffee to the docks, the ships that transport the coffee to our ports, the trucks that deliver green coffee to the roastery, and finally to the trucks that deliver our coffee to distributors and accounts. When you look at the whole picture, you can quickly see that we have quite a collective impact on our environment and how fuel plays a pivotal part in our industry.

While the growth in hybrids vehicles is impressive, hybrid technology does not currently offer any hope of reducing industry’s collective impact on the environment. Hybrid technology does not have a way of powering the large diesel trucks and ships we depend on to move coffee. But there is a “green” alternative that will not only drastically reduce negative impacts on the environment, it will also allow farms to be self-sustaining and will allow agriculturally strong countries to enter the fuels market with plant based green fuel crops. This movement has the potential to develop an entirely new agricultural economy. This “new” fuel is actually not new at all, it was intended as the fuel to power diesel motors when the motor was invented in 1910. This fuel is called “Biodiesel.”

Dr. Rudolf Diesel actually invented the diesel engine to run on a myriad of fuels including coal dust suspended in water, heavy mineral oil, and various vegetable oils. Dr. Diesel’s first engine experiments were catastrophic failures. But by the time he showed his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, his engine was running on 100% peanut oil. Dr. Diesel was visionary. In 1911 he stated “The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it.” In 1912, Diesel said, “The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time.” Since Dr. Diesel’s untimely death in 1913, his engine has been modified to run on the polluting petroleum fuel we now know as “diesel.” Nevertheless, his ideas on agriculture and his invention provide the foundation for a society fueled with clean, renewable, locally grown fuel.

Today’s Biodiesel is a fuel made from vegetable oil that runs in any diesel engine. Biodiesel can be made from any vegetable oil including oils pressed straight from the seed (virgin oils) such as peanut, soy, sunflower, canola, corn, coconut and hemp. Biodiesel can also be made from recycled cooking oils from fast food restaurants. Even animal fats like beef tallow and fish oil can be used to make Biodiesel fuel. Biodiesel is made through a chemical process called transesterification whereby the glycerin is separated from the fat of vegetable oil. What remains are two products—methyl esters (the chemical name for Biodiesel) and glycerin. The by-product glycerin is used in commercial applications such as soap, toothpaste and cough syrup.

Biodiesel is better for the environment because it is made from renewable resources and has drastically lower emissions than petroleum based diesel fuel. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar. Since it can be made from renewable resources such as soybeans and corn it decreases a country’s dependence on foreign oil and can contribute to their own economy.

Overall Biodiesel emissions are lower than gasoline or diesel fuel emissions. Compared to diesel, Biodiesel produces no sulfur, no net carbon dioxide, up to 20 times less carbon monoxide and more free oxygen. Biodiesel has the following emissions characteristics when compared with petroleum diesel fuel:

1. Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) by 100%
   
2. Reduction of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 100%
   
3. Reduction of soot emissions by 40-60%
   
4. Reduction of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions by 10-50%
   
5. Reduction of hydrocarbon (HC) emissions by 10-50%
   
6. Reduction of all polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and specifically the reduction of the following carcinogenic PAHs:
   
   • Reduction of phenanthren by 97%
   • Reduction of benzofloroanthen by 56%
   • Reduction of benzapyren by 71%
   • Reduction of aldehydes and aromatic compounds by 13%
     
7. Reduction or increase in nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions by 5-10% depending on the age and type of engine.

Biodiesel is convenient and can be used on any type of diesel motor without modification. It can be run 100% Biodiesel, 80/20 blend of Biodiesel/petroleum based diesel, or be splash blended (i.e.when Biodiesel can not be found, regular diesel can be added to the tank with no negative impact on performance). Biodiesel degrades about four times faster than petroleum diesel fuel. The degradation rate of petroleum diesel triples when blended with Biodiesel.

Because Biodiesel can replace or blend with petroleum diesel with little or no engine modifications, it is a viable alternative to several categories of the marine industry, including: recreational boats, inland commercial and ocean-going commercial ships, research vessels, and the U.S. Coast Guard Fleet. Today, much of the emphasis is on recreational boats, which consume about 95 million gallons of diesel fuel annually. However, Biodiesel is becoming more commonly used in the shipping industry. For the container ships that transport the world’s coffee supply, a recent study found that vessel operators report a noticeable change in exhaust odor. The reduction in smell and change of odor are easier on ship workers. In fact, the smell is often compared to the smell of French fries. Users also report no having eye irritation. Since Biodiesel is oxygenated, diesel engines have more complete combustion than with petroleum.

The City of Berkeley, Columbia, MO, the U.S. Military and more than 200 public and government agencies have all made the commitment to switch to Biodiesel. In the cases of Berkeley and Columbia- all city vehicles (including snow plows, city busses, garbage and fire trucks) are running on 100% Biodiesel. Senator Jim Talent (R-MO) was quoted as saying upon the adoption of the Biodiesel policy, “Biodiesel is vital to value-added agriculture," Talent said. "It is great to see Columbia again at the forefront of such an important thing." The U.S. Military, making a commitment to lessen its dependence on foreign oil and support U.S. soybean and corn farmers, has begun to transition its fleet to Biodiesel

As of this writing, two coffee companies have committed to running their entire delivery fleet on Biodiesel: Thanksgiving Coffee Co., of Fort Bragg, CA and Taylor Maid Farms, of Sebastopol, CA. Both companies have chosen the 100% Biodiesel fuel, over the available 80/20 blend. Both companies have contracted with Yokayo Biofuels, located in Ukiah, CA to deliver Biodiesel to their roasting plants. Yokayo is currently charging $2.32/gallon for the fuel, that’s about 57 cents higher than petroleum based diesel fuel available in the area. Because Yokayo is a cooperative, the price of fuel is based on the volume of fuel sold to its members. As volumes go up, the prices should go down. As Biodiesel becomes more widely available, nationwide pricing should fall dramatically. Biodiesel sells nationwide between $2.00–$2.75 a gallon.

Aside from the above benefits, the real benefit to our industry lies in the ability for coffee producing countries to diversify and grow corn and soybeans to become more energy self-reliant. This would offer three main benefits:

• In most developing countries the cost of in country produced Biodiesel would be much less than their petroleum-based diesel fuel (fuel costs almost double what we pay in the United States).
  
• It would offer these countries greatly improved air quality. In most developing countries, all transportation (personal, public and industrial) is diesel powered. Petroleum based diesel fuel is notoriously polluting and the cause of many respiratory illnesses
  
• It would allow rural farmers to be more self-reliant because bio-diesel can easily be created on the farm.

The benefits offered by Biodiesel are even more exaggerated when considering the cost of the petroleum industry on our society. It pollutes our air, water, and soil at every stage of its extraction and use. Biodiesel on the other hand, will support a farmer by providing a market for oil-based seed crops that can be grown sustainably and creates hardly any negative environmental impacts. More importantly, as developed nations have staked claims and waged wars in the Middle East for decades over access to their petroleum, it becomes ever more critical to find more locally based alternatives to the fossil fuel industry.

If you are interested in learning more about this product, you can learn more at the following websites: www.Biodiesel.org, www.Biodiesel.com and afdc.doe.gov/altfuel/Biodiesel.html. While I firmly believe that the coffee industry had been a leader in many environmental and social improvements, we should always be inclined to do more.