New Holland Supports B100
07 December 2007
New Holland, a leading global manufacturer of agricultural, utility and construction equipment, recently announced it supports the use of B100 biodiesel in all equipment with New Holland-manufactured diesel engines, including electronic injection engines with common rail technology.
Overall, nearly 80% of New Holland-branded products with diesel engines are now available to operate on B100 biodiesel. New Holland has also asked other suppliers of diesel engines used in New Holland-branded products to test and approve higher levels of biodiesel.
In addition to extensive testing and development within the company, New Holland has been involved in an ongoing research project in collaboration with Penn State University to put B100 to the test under real-life conditions. Penn State’s College of Agriculture is operating new, unmodified New Holland tractors on B100 biodiesel on their 1,500-acre research farm to find out what diesel equipment owners can expect to experience when they use B100. After nearly two years of use, the tractors have performed with no adverse effects in performance or maintenance, according to Glen Cauffman, the university’s manager of farm operations and services.
Details of the models that can run on B100, as well as New Holland’s requirements and recommendations to do so safely, are available from New Holland dealers or at www.newholland.com/na/biodiesel.
In EU a gallon of diesel is about $6.5. Farmers use a lot of diesel and it is a big part of their cost structure. I could imagine that it is quite easy to produce B100 diesel at most farm at far less than $6.5. The price of B100 without taxes at the farmer is probably close to $3.5 per gallon or less. It will probably be illegal for a farmer to produce his own diesel or part of it and not inform the tax authority about this production. However, it will be very difficult for any tax authority to actually control whether some of this farmer’s homemade B100 “slips” into his own diesel equipment and perhaps the neighboring farmers equipment ass well.
I have no inside information about this at all but I could imagine that tax avoidance on diesel fuel is a major reason that farmers all over Europe have started to order B100 compliant equipment almost exclusively. In any case it is good that farmers are now becoming self supplied with diesel. The involved logistics are perfect. They save all the transportation cost involved with diesel production.
Posted by: Henrik | 07 December 2007 at 02:35 AM
Henrik:
Not only farmers. Im my country (Poland) I've seen that _most_ forestry vehicles are operated on illegal SVO (rapeseed oil), and of corse farmers also use it.
And many parking lots where light duty vehicle drivers are used to stop for rest, are littered with empty 5L PET rapeseed oil bottles. They rather haven't fried fries.
Posted by: Jaros | 07 December 2007 at 03:37 PM
I don't know of anyone able to produce significant volumes of B100 (methyl ester of vegetable oil, with specific pH and ash levels). You two are not talking about biodiesel, but vegetable oil.
No modern diesel has ever been qualified to run on pure vegetable oil - only some (old, dirty) diesels with pre-chamber injection are able to run that stuff for extended periods without engine failure...
(Besides, veggie oil has no defined pH, and the contained acids are rather corrosive on modern materials (Al, Mg) used in many engine parts...
Richard
Posted by: realarms | 08 December 2007 at 01:17 AM
Richard
You are right. I did a little research on B100 and it is not something you can produce on a farm. You need a factory and large supplies of alcohol and means to dispose of large quantities of the byproduct glycerol almost 10%. The reason that farmers all over EU are buying B100 compliant equipment must be that they don’t want to have equipment that can’t use B100 that is increasingly available in the EU. EU produced 1.5 billion gallons of B100 in 2006 and production capacity is reaching 3 billion gallons in 2007.
Maybe farmers are using vegetable oil for heating and drying purposes. Maybe that is cheaper than using natural gas that is also taxed a lot in the EU.
Posted by: Henrik | 08 December 2007 at 03:01 AM
So now we're back at the dawn of the 20th century, with farmers putting agriculturally produced fuels into their diesel trucks and tractors just as Rudolf Diesel originally intended. Meanwhile all sorts of little electric car companies are popping up, entering the competition for the future of the automobile with their newfangled technologies. Who will win? I hope I don't have to come back in another hundred years to find out!
Really, doesn't it seem like we could've just skipped the 20th century altogether?
Posted by: Jeff R | 09 December 2007 at 11:19 PM