Houston Biodiesel
By Brian Herod, March 2006

That french fry smell on the highways no longer is just your average fast food restaurant. It could be a car that uses biodiesel for fuel. Biodiesel is a growing industry and more people are filling their diesel cars with this fuel to reduce environmentally damaging emissions. Houston has its own biodiesel company, Houston Biodiesel.

Biodiesel originates most frequently from vegetable oil. In the production, manufacturers mix vegetable oil with specific chemicals that separates the oil from the waste product, glycerin. Biodiesel producers sell the glycerin on the open market for soap making. Biodiesel can be produced from waste vegetable oil which was previously was sold as an ingredient for the cosmetic and pet food industry. The source vegetable oil begins with virgin oil or waste vegetable oil (WVO). The virgin oil typically comes from soybean oil, but rapeseed oil (canola) is also gaining in importance. Waste vegetable oil comes from leftover oil from restaurants' deep fryers and has more non-oil contaminants than virgin oil. Biodiesel producers could use almost any vegetable oil such as oil from palm, coconut, olive, and other fatty producing plants. Each region throughout the world could harvest their own source of vegetable oil. Producers call the vegetable oil used in the creation of biodiesel “feedstock”. In Canada and Arkansas, cattle and chicken processing plants are selling the remnants of their process, skin and fat for example, as feedstock for biodiesel production.

Chris Powers founded Houston biodiesel because it was the right thing to do. At first, he used the office space of his steel fastener and freight business in north Houston as a place to produce biodiesel as a hobby. As he found more and more people interested in purchasing it for use in their cars, generators, tractors, boats and other diesel burning engines, he began to sell it from his shop. Chris is a gregarious, young man who describes himself as a Rice geek. As a Rice University alumni, he helped to start the Rice Biodiesel Initiative who's goal is to use waste vegetable oil from the cafeterias to fuel the campus shuttle bus that ferries students across campus.

Biodiesel helps the quality of the environment in many ways. Biodiesel is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades faster than sugar in the environment. According to the National Biodiesel Board, when burned in a diesel engine it “results in a substantial reduction of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter compared to emissions from diesel fuel.” Although it releases carbon dioxide when burned, many consider it carbon neutral. Plants take carbon dioxide out of the air to make carbohydrates and oxygen. Plants such as soybean and rapeseed provide the feedstock for much of the virgin oil. When burned as biodiesel, this carbon is released into the environment again as carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide is considered carbon neutral because it's an amount of carbon that a plant could potentially use again to produce more carbohydrates. Petroleum oil takes carbon which has been in the earth for millions of years and releases it into the environment. Whether the current plant life on earth can process this extra carbon in the air is debated by many climate change scientists.

Houston Biodiesel has had mixed success. Currently, it's not a profitable venture. Chris continues because biodiesel is a growth industry. National biodiesel production has increased from 2 million gallons in 2000 to nearly 25 million gallons in 2004. During the impending arrival of hurricane Rita when diesel prices rose higher than that of biodiesel, Chris reported that he had a line of people waiting for fuel. Normally, he has about 100 regular customers and about 500 people in the metro Houston area know about his operations. During Rita, he considered taking down his website to curb the demand. “Price is a huge factor when it comes to people's purchasing decisions,” Chris says. “When biodiesel comes closer in price to traditional diesel, our volume will increase and hopefully, we'll become more profitable.”

The future is bright for Houston Biodiesel. They're moving their offices closer to the main road in their business park for more exposure. The new offices will include a faster traditional gas-station pump with a larger storage tank. They're also considering fueling a generator for producing their own electricity for their operations. On February, 11-12th, they'll host a biodiesel making class produced by Maria 'Girl Mark' Alovert who tours the country instructing people in how to manufacture biodiesel safely for home use. Chris' vision is to open a boutique gas station selling biodiesel in the Montrose or Heights area of Houston. The upcoming opening of a new large scale biodiesel refinery in South Texas will help this dream become a reality. The plant is expected to produce 50 millions gallons of biodiesel each year.

Visit www.houstonbiodiesel.com to register for the workshop in February or stop by to fill up the tank of your diesel auto. Supporting renewable, clean fuels is a first step in improving the air quality of Houston. Also check out the National Biodiesel Board and the book Biodiesel Power and Biodiesel: Growing A New Energy Economy