After two years of experimenting with a biodiesel blend, Saskatoon Transit Services is making a permanent conversion to the alternative fuel.
The city plans to move its entire fleet of 113 buses to a blend that contains one percent biodiesel, which it estimates will save local taxpayers five cents per litre through increased fuel economy and decreased engine wear.
That calculation is based on diesel prices of $1 per litre and biodiesel prices of $1.50 per litre.
“With the fuel prices going the way they are, (biodiesel) is becoming more viable all the time,” said Abe Driedger, maintenance manager with Saskatoon Transit Services.
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Roy Button, executive director of the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission, is pleased with the results of the two-year study, which was the commission’s first scientific look at how canola-based biodiesel would perform in large diesel engines.
“It tells us that our research we did before is similar in large engines as it was in smaller engines,” he said.
That is an important finding because most of the 25 billion litres of diesel consumed in Canada annually is used to fuel semi-trailers, buses and industrial-sized trucks.
The research showed that at a five percent blend, biodiesel reduced fuel consumption in the four trial buses by 2.7 to 4.3 percent, decreased engine wear by 7.8 to 23.4 percent and eliminated 6.6 to 8.2 percent of the normal greenhouse gas emissions.
“We ended up with about a 22 percent engine wear reduction in the city buses and about a three percent fuel economy benefit,” said Barry Hertz, the University of Saskatchewan mechanical engineering professor who led the study.
A fifth bus made numerous trips between Saskatoon and Regina with varying blends of biodiesel.
Data from the study showed the best fuel economy for highway driving could be obtained using a one percent blend, while still delivering a 26 to 35 percent decrease in engine wear.
Driedger said the findings convinced the city a one percent blend was the best choice for its fleet of buses, although he pointed out that if the federal government implements a carbon credit trading system to meet its Kyoto Accord obligations, the city might be better off moving to a five percent blend, which delivers better greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Saskatoon’s bus fleet consumes 3.4 million litres of fuel a year, so a one percent blend would amount to 34,000 litres of biodiesel.
However, Saskatoon isn’t the only city experimenting with biodiesel. In 2004, eight Canadian transit systems used biodiesel, consuming 8.7 million litres of blended fuel, and that number is set to blossom with the announcement that as of June, the Toronto Transit Commission is switching its fleet of 1,500 buses to a five percent blend of soy-based biodiesel.
Other cities may follow suit once they hear the results of the Saskatoon study, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, to be held in Saskatoon this month.
According to the association, the 12,486 transit buses operating in Canada in 2004 consumed 382 million litres of diesel. If they all went to a one percent blend, that would create a market for 3.8 million litres of biodiesel.
Button took that scenario one step further. A nationwide mandate for a one percent blend of all diesel fuel would create a market for 250 million litres of biodiesel, which would require about one million acres of canola.
That would be a substantial new market for the oilseed, considering growers intend to plant 11.6 million acres of canola this year.
And while a one percent blend looks like the best value in today’s market, a five percent blend could become more economical in time.
“If the price of fuel keeps going up, somewhere here it is going to be just as economical to make biodiesel out of vegetable oil as it is to buy diesel,” Button said.
And he agreed with Driedger that the introduction of carbon credits could also boost biodiesel sales as cities attempt to reduce environmental pollution.
“We see potential to expand percentages as that becomes more of an issue,” he said.
