This Farm Runs on Biodiesel

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This Farm Runs on Biodiesel
By Saphir Lewis
This Farm Runs on Biodiesel

John: and Marcia have a small 75 acre family farm with their two daughters and their families. They are energy self sufficient, with solar and wind power and Biodiesel powered vehicles, including their tractor. WPE's Nate Haney and I, Saphir Lewis, stopped by to take a look at their Biodiesel setup on May 5, 2006. It was a beautiful spring day. John and Marcia took us on a tour of the farm. We were welcomed by ponies and goats and a very proud turkey, all hoping for our pats and attention.

Marcia: We have animals. It's really nice knowing that it isn't going to kill them if we spill some Biodiesel. In fact our little mustang enjoys it if we spill some, she's always licking the tank and she loves the smell because it smells delicious. It's very funny to watch the animals while I'm out in the field with the tractor because they all love it. You can make Biodiesel out of any kind of vegetable oil, so – if you live in Alaska you'd use some kind of plant that grows in Alaska, if you lived in Texas, you'd use something that grows there. There are many different plants to use....

John: There's switchgrass, palm oil, sugarcane....

Marcia: And you don't have to ship it. With petroleum oil you have to ship it across the ocean. If something happens it kills the wildlife and is very dangerous. With Biodiesel you don't need to ship it so far, you can grow it relatively locally, and it isn't dangerous.

(We took a look at the little red Volkswagen Rabbit, parked outside the main house. it was bright red and covered with Biodiesel slogans and stickers.)

John: This is a car we got for free, we traded some fence and fence posts for it. We wanted to make a demonstration car to show that the Biodiesel does work. Everything online said that with Volkswagen you just change the fuel filter and go. We got this car because it didn't run and we repaired the engine – it was already a diesel. All we had to do was have the injectors cleaned; they were fouled by regular diesel. We put a new clutch in it, some tires and then I painted it. Other than that it's pretty simple. We've had the car for 3 years now. We tried it with some Biodiesel at first and it worked okay. The whole idea was to show that it is patriotic to use Biodiesel, so we put a little American flag on the back there, to draw attention to it. We get a lot of questions. Every time we're out shopping, somebody will stop to ask us about it. That's why we painted it to draw attention. We explain to them all about Biodiesel, how good it works and all.

The people who sell us the Biodiesel got us the plastic drums. They come out to the farm and fill it up and we usually get about 200 gallons at a time. We may get a few more drums, we go through quite a bit in the summer time, because the tractor runs a lot in the summer.

We have a standard pump that you can get anywhere for it. We do keep regular diesel on hand, in wintertime you have to mix it. You have to dilute it down because it will gel. This winter got really cold, and we did have to run a 50/50 mix on the biodiesel with regular diesel.

Marcia: I didn't on the tractor though.

John: I had problems on the Rabbit (Volkswagen).

Marcia: The tractor is pretty new, she's superior, only a couple of years old. The Rabbit and the Peugeot are very, very old.

John: The tractor has an Italian engine and so does the new Jeep Liberty. The Liberty has a diesel engine that is built by the same company that owns the tractor company. Unless you buy a John Deere, you're buying it from VM Matori. They bought Case and New Holland just about everybody else other than John Deere. They're making all the tractors here (in the U.S.).

For the little farm that we have here, we grow as much of our food as we can, so we do need the tractor for the garden, alot of hauling and keeping the roads open on 75 acres. We'll be mowing soon, cutting the blackberries back. We put a good sized garden in every year, and last year we added grapes and berries.

(Next we took a stroll down to the barn where the Biodiesel is kept in plastic 50 gallon drums. There were two drums, each with a pump attached)

Nate: How exactly does all this work?

John: This is a basic fuel pump.

Nate: Is it pressurized in here?

John: No, because this is B99, (they quit selling B100 because they now get a tax credit for blending).

Marcia: This is an old fashioned pump.

John: This is a Vane pump. Alot of them are the push pull type that have a diaphram. Unless the diaphram is made of the right material it will rot. The Vane's are actually made of a carbon block, so you don't have to worry about degrading. It has to be a Biodiesel approved pump. Biodiesel has problems with the rubber. We have to buy new hoses every couple of years because they will start to rot.

Nate: They're starting to make gaskets and hosing using just metal to stop the deterioration.

John: Also, a lot of the pumps are just a lap fit now. They don't have a gasket in it. They've been so highly polished, with a mirror finish, they just put them together and bolt them down and they fit so well. It's new technology, better practices.

You could go down and buy a Jeep Liberty right now and it's already designed to handle Biodiesel. It has a unique system. It's probably the most advanced technical diesel engine available in the U.S. You can also go down and buy any German made diesel and it will handle Biodiesel. If you have a domestic diesel engine you may have to change some gaskets and seals, but there are places online (www.greasecar.com, and the links on www.biodiesel.org), that will sell you a complete kit with everything you need to convert your vehicle over to Biodiesel. Most American cars have rubber gaskets and what you need is a product called Viton. Viton O rings and hoses. Viton doesn't have a problem with Biodiesel. The Americans have always used rubber because we have such vast amounts of rubber holdings all over the world. But this synthetic rubber will replace gaskets and hoses. There are a couple of companies that make it.

(We heard the tractor running and walked down the hill to see John and Marcia's daughter moving some mulch for the garden.)

John: Push the gas pedal! Can you smell the difference? There's almost no smell, if anything it smells good enough to eat!

(I could barely smell anything at all, it had a very clean smell for an engine. As we walked around the farm looking at the solar electric fence unit and meeting more animals, Marcia talked about their set)

With the tractor and the Peugeot we did nothing to convert them, we just poured in the Biodiesel – the European engines have hoses that handle the Biodiesel and the Americans use rubber that deteriorates. It's not the Biodiesel. It's just the hoses.

You can go online, type in the make of your car, and it will give you a whole kit – what you need to convert the lines to the engine, what you need to replace. The kits are only $100 or so.

When we built the house we designed it to be solar powered, we insulated the heck out of it, now I'd like to say we're great engineers, but alot of it was luck, on the coldest winter days we have to open the doors because of the woodstove.

Marcia: It cost about $10,000 to set up everything to get off the grid and we haven't had a utility bill since. Solar, the Inverter, Windmill and a $4000 generator. We bought a bigger generator because we needed alot of power to build the house, but in the winter when we didn't get alot of sun we ran the generator alot, we run it on biodiesel.

Nate: How long have you had this setup?

Solar panel

Power Storage Batteries

Power Invertor

Marcia: 5 years

Nate: How much was your energy cost before?

Marcia: It takes 6-10 years, depending on how much your power bill goes up, to pay off your solar equipment.

John: We've probably paid it off.

Nate: So after this it's free?

John: You have to replace your batteries every now and then. Just like you would on your car. We used to have 12, but we are only running 8 right now.