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Bio-Diesel
| Date: |
20 August 2006 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Eugene Botha
Eugene Botha
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
We live in a world addicted to oil. There is no doubt about it. We use it for energy and light and it's part of almost every consumer product we use. And more than anything, we use it for transport.
But for a world addicted to oil, any war or rumour of war is bad news. Because, with every bomb that explodes in London or Baghdad or Beirut, the oil price jumps.
And higher oil prices mean you'll be paying more for everything - from your house, to the clothes you wear, to the food in the freezer.
Last year we brought you a story about oil.
[Carte Blanche 15/05/2005]
John Webb (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Record crude oil prices have pushed our petrol prices up again. It is now more than five rand a litre.'
Did you hear that? A little more than a year ago the petrol price was a mere R5.22 a litre. And we complained! Now we're paying a whopping seven rand four cents for 95 Octane in some areas.
But, believe it or not, a few innovative South African motorists are not affected by soaring fuel prices at all.
Derek Watts (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Apart from the drums in the background [on screen], you could say that this is your typical suburban garage. There is a big difference. This car [on screen] has been running on bio-diesel for the last year. Where does it come from? Well, from the drums in the background.'
Paul Maher (Bio-diesel manufacturer): 'The exhaust doesn't have that horrible normal fossil diesel smell. It smells more like fish and chips.'
Paul Maher has been producing bio-diesel in the garage of his townhouse in Sunninghill for 18 months, using used vegetable oil he collects from restaurants and cafés.
Derek: 'Paul, how did you go about producing your own fuel?'
Paul: 'Okay, we collect oil from the restaurants and bring it back to the little plant here. It gets poured into the plant and it gets strained, so we take out all the big horrible bits and pieces. That gets pumped into the processor. The oil then gets tested to see how many free fatty acids have ended up in it, which is also a pretty good indication of how good the restaurant is that you eat your food at! And, depending on how good or bad it is, we add a higher or lower percentage of chemicals into it. The basic bio-diesel process is reducing the viscosity of the oil by removing the glycerine out of the oil. Once the chemical process has taken place and you have bio-diesel and crude glycerine, you separate the glycerine from the bio-diesel and that bio-diesel is then washed, which removes any other impurities from it. And from there it then gets pumped into your car. The glycerine waste stream that comes out of the bio-diesel can be refined further. It can go into cosmetics, it can be turned into soaps. The whole process has very little waste in it.'
Derek: 'Paul, you have got various costs like collection, but what are you paying per litre?'
Paul: 'The processing costs are more or less a rand. So, if you are paying two rand a litre for the oil, the fuel ends up costing you three rand a litre.'
Derek: 'Now do you get a litre of fuel from a litre of oil?'
Paul: 'The formula is more or less a litre of oil, 220ml of methanol, and from that you get a litre of bio-diesel and 220ml of glycerine. So yes, a litre of oil will give you a litre of bio-diesel.'
Derek: 'Now once you'd set-up your refinery you had a major obstacle?'
Paul: 'Which was?'
Derek: 'Convincing Sue to drive the car.'
Paul [laughs]: 'She was happy enough to drive the car.'
Derek: 'Sue, you haven't cheated too much?'
Sue Maher: 'The only time my car has not had bio-diesel in it was when I drove it off the showroom floor and once when Paul ran out of bio-diesel and I had to put R50 of normal diesel in.'
Derek: 'And how has your car been performing on this vegetable oil?'
Sue: 'No problems whatsoever. It runs beautifully. I much prefer the vegetable oil.'
Derek: 'Thanks Sue, the car seems to go fairly well. It was my first trip on used chip oil.'
Sue: 'Your first environmentally friendly car ride...'
But the production of bio-diesel in the back yard will hardly solve the world's oil crisis. Mike Schussler, an economist, calculates that the world consumes more than 85 billion barrels of oil every day.
Mike Schussler (Economist): 'At the moment we are seeing record prices after record prices. We have seen a doubling of the oil price in a matter of two and half years, and we are looking at a situation where that is really starting to influence the world economy. Whether it is the growth in America or the consumer's pocket in South Africa, it is becoming a problem.'
Derek: 'A problem that obviously deserves urgent attention. And that is why alternatives to fossil fuels are now receiving attention. And here bio-fuels are taking the world by storm. Bio-fuels are fuels [which] are produced from plants and plant seeds. There are two types of bio-fuels: there is ethanol, which is produced from crops such as maize or sugar cane and can serve as a replacement for petrol or can be mixed with petrol. Virtually all the cars in Brazil run on ethanol. And then there is bio-diesel produced from any kind of plant or vegetable oil. It can be used just like this, or can be mixed with ordinary diesel to run any kind of diesel vehicle.'
But for bio-fuels to make a difference, the world needs to be alerted that there are alternatives to expensive, polluting fossil fuels. And in this, two very unlikely bedfellows have taken the lead.
This man [pictured on screen], who was born in Johannesburg - and this man [pictured on screen], a country and western singer.
In real Texas style, they are teaming up to bring bio-diesel on a large scale to a fuel hungry U.S.
Peter Bell (Founder BioWillie Diesel): 'I was one of only a few out there. When I started there were only three companies manufacturing bio-diesel in the United States.'
Peter Bell is a South African entrepreneur. He moved to the US with high hopes to live the American dream.
With America embroiled in wars in Iraq, and oil and fuel costs in the US spiralling out of control, he saw a gap in the embryonic, but fast developing bio-fuel industry.
Peter: 'People were manufacturing it, but nobody was selling it into the retail area or distributing it to the retail outlets. Nobody was doing this.'
So Peter began a small bio-diesel distribution business in Dallas, Texas. One day he got a call that was to change his life.
Peter: 'I had a lot of calls from people trying to get fuel. I had this one particular call from Willie Nelson and I didn't know who he was. But he had a very strong voice and some kind of aura about him. I wouldn't normally drive a tank of fuel out to somebody's bus, but because of his personality from the phone call I thought I will go do that.'
Peter met Willie and, with a shock, realised who the man really was. The next few months he repeatedly fuelled Willie Nelson's tour bus with pure bio-diesel.
Willie Nelson (Country & Western Singer): 'I first became aware of it a couple of years ago when my wife said that she wanted a car that runs on bio-diesel. So I said I had never heard of it but if that is what you want we will do it. So she got her Volkswagen diesel and I liked it so much, I bought a Mercedes diesel and it has never had anything else in it but vegetable oil. Here at my place... a 600-gallon tank across the road. I fill my buses up with bio-diesel one hundred percent soy beans every time we get ready to leave.'
Peter realised Willie's fame and his enthusiasm for bio-diesel would be ideal to market bio-diesel to millions of people. He approached Willie to become a partner in his business.
Willie liked the idea and invited Peter to his ranch. They both liked chess and, after a few games, they were business partners.
Willie: 'So we started promoting bio-diesel at bus stops.'
And so the diesel brand BioWillie was born. It is a mixture of 20% bio-diesel and 80% ordinary diesel. It was a runaway success, especially among truckers, who swear by it.
Colin (Trucker): 'We make a point of stopping at this truck stop every time we come through this area just so we can fill up on BioWillie - you know, support Willie and support the advancing technology. I noticed that the truck smokes less when I use it and it makes at least as much power if not more. If there were two truck stops and the one had bio-diesel and the other didn't I would pay more to buy the bio-diesel.'
Demand for BioWillie rocketed the last few months and large numbers of truck stops all over the southern U.S. are now selling it.
And thousands of struggling American farmers are also benefiting. They are cultivating crops to produce vegetable oil specifically for the expanding bio-diesel market.
Derek [small container in hand]: 'This is what pure BioWillie looks like, all the way from Dallas, Texas. It is a natural product and completely non-toxic and safe. They say you can even drink it. I won't do that, but I will have a small taste. It is sort of like vegetable oil... with a bit of a kick and a lingering after burn. Not bad, though.'
Large quantities of bio-diesel are produced in exactly the same simple way as home bio-diesel, and the manufacturing process does not harm the environment in any way.
Because of government subsidies in the U.S., bio-diesel costs the same as ordinary diesel.
But it has huge advantages over fossil fuels. It is clean burning and does not produce any green house gasses.
Unlike fossil oil, when it spills, it does not create a hazard to plant or animal. In fact, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, bio-diesel was one of the things used to clean the wildlife and coastline. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades quicker than sugar.
Derek: 'There are already plans under way to produce bio-diesel on a large scale in South Africa as well. And the other bio-fuel, that is bio-ethanol, which is used as a petrol replacement, isn't being left behind.'
Like bio-diesel, ethanol is clean burning and does not pollute at all.
Three weeks ago a consortium of farmers in Bothaville in the Free State started to build an ethanol plant to produce vast quantities of bio-ethanol from surplus maize.
Johan Hoffman is the CEO of Ethanol Africa.
Johan Hoffman (CEO Ethanol Africa): 'The capital costs of building the first plant will be around six million rand. And our plan is to have a rollout program in the next six years to build eight ethanol plants all around the rural areas that produce maize in South Africa.'
Derek: 'Johan, you are talking relatively big figures, but in truth you are not talking about replacing fossil fuels?'
Johan: 'No I don't think bio-fuels could replace fossil fuels in South Africa in the short term. But in the long term we can produce ten percent of South Africa's need. And add with that what we get from a company like Sasol, we are fifty percent self-efficient in this country. Renewable sources are available and Africa has the potential to produce bio-fuels for the rest of the world because we have vast quantities of land available - good land, and good for the production of maize and sugar cane. I think this is Africa's time now to be the Arabs of the world.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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