How To Make Biodiesel

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has officially verified that a specially-additized blend of 20% biodiesel in regular U.S. EPA ULSD fuel can meet the nitrogen oxides reduction requirements for Texas Low Emissions Diesel (Tx-LED) as required in most of Texas. Key to the verification: Oryxe “OR-LED2″ additive, which earlier won TCEQ Tx-LED verification for non-biodiesel blend. The only difference between Tx-LED additized regular diesel fuel and Tx-LED additized B20 blend is that a higher dosage of “OR-LED2″ is required for the B20 Tx-LED blend, as Oryxe CEO Jim Cleary told Diesel Fuel News in an interview. The OR-LED2 dosage for “Tx-LED” B20 blend is at least 20 milliliters per gallon, or about 1 tablespoon. Winning the latest TCEQ approval required rigorous testing at the U.S. EPA-recognized emissions test labs at West Virginia University, under a standard test protocol mandated by TCEQ. The verification means that refiners, terminal operators and fuel blenders only need to follow the specific dosage blending instructions as specified in the TCEQ verification. Both truck splash-blending or terminal rack metering are possible. Since the same OR-LED2 additive can be used for either non-biodiesel or B20 blend, there’s no extra infrastructure cost for making a B20 version of Tx-LED diesel fuel. Tx-LED is mandatory in 110 east Texas counties including major metro areas, and is similar to the low-aromatics, high-cetane California Air Resources Board “CARB diesel.” Some Texas refiners qualify via additization while others use refining schemes. Oryxe hopes that the TCEQ OR-LED2 verifications will support marketing efforts in other states that face ozone-reduction deadlines from U.S. EPA, as well as states that are keen on biodiesel. Missouri, for example, is the U.S.’s biggest biodiesel producer. “Having TCEQ certification allows us to talk to [air pollution] regulators in other states,” Cleary explains. “This helps them to recognize there’s a cost-effective solution to the NOx bump” with B-20 blends. While Cleary wouldn’t specify a precise per-gallon cost of OR-LED2 necessary to overcome the B-20 NOx bump, he said it’s “pennies per gallon.” Meantime, Oryxe is “75% of the way to complete what we need to do for CARB verification” to qualify as “CARB diesel,” a blend of ordinary EPA ULSD fuel mixed with the OR-LED additive. Such verification eventually could open the door to more CARB diesel supplies in a California diesel market that’s chronically tight. Eventually, Oryxe might seek CARB verification of an additized low-NOx biodiesel blend as well. But that depends upon CARB coming up with a new regulatory scheme to ensure biodiesel meets emissions performance requirements. Scoping data that Oryxe earlier presented to CARB indicates that a properly-additized B20 blend probably could overcome the typical NOx increase problem with biodiesel blend.

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