Biodiesel is a vegetable oil alternative fuel that is now expanding in leaps and bounds within the commercial market. Originally, the fuel was seen as an alternative to gasoline for automobiles, but, Bio Heating Oil is now becoming very popular and is now being substituted for the conventional red diesel heating oil.
Bio Heating Oil was under the radar because of the price, fuel oil was cheaper than biodiesel. Things have changed dramatically since 2001, heating oil prices have doubled. The countries relationship with oil producing countries is rocky and natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina have all added to problems. With the reduction in the price-gap and an ever increasing public awareness of environmental sustainability, bio heating oil has now found a new home.
Biodiesel has a number of advantages over regular heating oil. It burns much cleaner, has fewer emissions and does not rely on foreign oil, but soybeans grown in the United States. The oil saving potential is huge; if the heating oil users in the US were to switch to a blend of 5% bio, the savings would be 330 million gallons of oil per year and if the usage was to be 100% bio, the oil saved would equate to 6.7 billion gallons.
Unfortunately, as good as this sound’s, it will not happen any time in the near future.
There is simply not enough bio heating oil available to supply the complete customer base with 100% bio. The annual production of biodiesel is currently only about 200 million gallons a year, this is not even enough for a 5% blend.
At high concentrations, biodiesel has the tendency to thicken at low temperatures, hampering its ability to flow properly. This will pose major problems for users in particularly cold parts of the country who have an outdoor tank. As biodiesel is a solvent, it attacks rubber seals and loosens all the years of accumulated sludge in tanks that have typically stored diesel heating oil.
Even though the price-gap has narrowed considerably, bio heating oil is still more expensive than regular heating oil. A minimum 5% blend will cost about 5 cents per gallon more, the higher the blend, and the greater the price disparity. When you consider that on average, a home consumes between 800 and 1000 gallons of heating oil a season, this could be as little as a $50 premium for 5% or as much as $750 for 100%.
As an alternative to both biodiesel and red diesel, homeowners who are particularly keen on environmental issues are modifying their furnaces to burn waste cooking oil. This source of vegetable oil can be free of charge from many restaurants; all the user has to do is collect it.
