Unlike ethanol, biodiesel can be used in ratios of up to 100% without having to reconfigure engines. Not only is it not harmful to engines, many authorities say it is actually helpful – being made from fats or vegetable oils, it has lubricating properties.
But while transport industries have a high awareness of the fuel, commercial realities mean uptake of biodiesel was limited.
“The biggest problem, like gas and other things, is the distribution of it,” Marleys Transport director Steve Marley said.
“The facts of the matter are that diesel fuel oil is a commodity you need to put in your trucks to make them go. At the end of the day, I don’t care if its canola diesel or petroleum diesel, just so long as it does the job.”
Based in Western Australia, Marleys runs 40 trucks and is one of the state’s biggest transporters of grain.
“I wouldn’t have thought people would be looking too seriously at trying to find an alternative, because diesel is still relatively reasonably priced, considering the consumer – who’s paying for it – isn’t screaming black death,” Marley said.
“While the customer’s paying, no one’s going to do anything. If you go to KFC and the price of chicken’s gone up 10c a piece, no one will notice. The cost is getting passed on and the consumer’s paying for it.”
Marley also said that while there were the obvious environmental/sustainability advantages of biodiesel, the fuel’s base resource was, like crude oil, also a commodity susceptible to price fluctuations.
“If we’ve got all these people making biodiesel out of canola and suddenly there’s a drought and they produce half a million tonnes of canola instead on a million, the price is going to go through the roof.”
Jay Mills, of Dananni Haulage, said he had thought about using biodiesel, but his main concern was the travel involved in getting hold of it.
“If they can make it more available, or if we could carry enough to go from here (Perth) to Darwin and it was more cost-efficient or the same as diesel but environmentally better, I’d be all for it,” Mills said.
“We’ve only got about 60 years of diesel left,” he said. “We’re looking at putting LPG on some of our trucks now.”
Mills said Dananni was working on a fuel delivery system which feeds an LPG-diesel blend into the engine.
“The process of doing it is quite simple, but we have to get our computer module to recognise differences in humidity in the atmosphere,” he said.
“You might run from Perth to Albany one day, the next day you might go from Perth to Darwin,” Mills said. “The humidity and the atmospheric pressures change dramatically, and if don’t change your fuel accordingly, one day your motor will be starved and the next it’ll be over-fuelling.”
Three other major operators interviewed for this article said they primarily used subcontractors, and the management of the fuel for their trucks was therefore up to the drivers themselves.
There seems to be no prejudice against biodiesel, but according to those who run the trucks and count the dollars going into them, the industry’s uptake of the fuel will ultimately rely on two things: price and availability.
