UPDATE:
Lab tests show the problem was may be caused by paraffin wax – a derivative of Diesel Fuel. See this report:
http://nbb.grassroots.com/resources/BloomingtonBusReport.pdf
This bus design does not allow for heating of the filter by the engine.
h/t to Kum Dullison
UPDATE2: There is new information, from E.M. Smith in comments, citing that possibility of “methylester that solidifies at >10F vs Paraffin wax” could be a contributor. The lab did not test for that, so the question of fuel quality remains unresolved.
==========================================
Excerpts from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 16th 2009
Biodiesel fuel woes close Bloomington schools
“All schools in the Bloomington School District (Minnesota) will be closed today after state-required biodiesel fuel clogged in school buses Thursday morning and left dozens of students stranded in frigid weather, the district said late Thursday.
Rick Kaufman, the district’s spokesman, said elements in the biodiesel fuel that turn into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 degrees clogged about a dozen district buses Thursday morning. Some buses weren’t able to operate at all and others experienced problems while picking up students, he said.
We had students at bus stops longer than we think is acceptable, and that’s too dangerous in these types of temperatures,” Kaufman said.”
. . .
The decision to close school today came after district officials consulted with several neighboring districts that were experiencing similar problems. Bloomington staffers tried to get a waiver to bypass the state requirement and use pure diesel fuel, but they weren’t able to do so in enough time, Kaufman said. They also decided against scheduling a two-hour delay because the temperatures weren’t expected to rise enough that the problem would be eliminated.
In 2005, a new requirement went into effect that all diesel fuel sold in Minnesota had to contain 2 percent biodiesel. Kaufman said that some school districts keep their buses in temperature-controlled garages, and that the First Student bus service, which contracts with several metro-area school districts, keeps its buses in garages or idles them through the night.
Meanwhile, in other news:
Minnesota Boosts Biodiesel Initiative from 2 to 20%
(h/t to Popular Technology)
I like the way the plate on the front of the bus (almost) says Eco-Liars
RobJM (22:54:29) wrote: “All they need to do is light a small fire under the busses…”
Under the buses, Rob…?
Perhaps the answer is to allow the planet to heat up enough where we won’t ever have a cold temperature problem again.
tallbloke (02:57:30) ~ Roger Clague (01:52:02) :
“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. …”
(From the transcript in the NYTimes “Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address”.)
I was also disappointed Roger.
Here is the transcript from cnn of Obama’s address yesterday.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/obama.politics/index.html
“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”
“MattN (02:54:02) :
I’m a fan of biodiesel, and I just wonder if the same thing would have happened to regular diesel fuel? I’m not positive this is a fair judgement of biodiesel.”
Read E.M.Smith’s (01:00:38) response. But basically the answer is yes, regular diesel will also have issues in cold wether depending on the grade but at lower temperatures than the biodiesel, much lower for some grades.
Alan the Brit (01:51:19) :In the US you can buy cars with block heaters and I assume in areas that benefit from these the dealers order them that way, In other areas it would require a special order. I do not know that they are mandated, but they may be in states like Minnesota. I do not know if diesel cars have factory options for tank and fuel line heaters, never lived in a place cold enough to need them or owned a diesel for that matter.
Umm, does this mean global warming is responsible for the failure of the public school system? We have a lot of home schoolers in New Hampshire. I bet some of the Minnesotan home schoolers that day had a special science component about biodiesel and a social science reminder about the political law of unintended consequences.
tallbloke (02:57:30) :
Roger Clague (01:52:02) :
I was disappointed to hear Obama say yesterday that we should get our fuel in the future from wind, sun and the LAND, that is more biodiesel.
I didn’t hear that in the inauguration speech, do you have a reference?
Here’s the text – it’s about 1/3 of the way down, starting with “For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.”
Text of President Barack Obama’s inaugural address
Another thing he says that caught my eye in the same paragraph is “We will restore science to its rightful place…”. I’m not sure what he meant by that, but it makes me uneasy. I can only hope he knows the difference between science and dogma.
Tallbloke
TO…
“was disappointed to hear Obama say yesterday that we should get our fuel in the future from wind, sun and the LAND,”
“I didn’t hear that…”
My newspaper wrote he actually said the “soil” in place of the land. The rest is substantially accurate.
Refiners in cold climates make winter diesel, with lower a “cloud point” that ensures it will flow at cold temperatures. It costs more to remove the wax that determines the cloud point, but to truckers and refiners alike the requirement is obvious. The market demands it on a seasonal basis and no sane refiner would attempt to sell summer diesel into a winter diesel market.
Seems like no one told the biodiesel suppliers that the real world includes the laws of physics and chemistry, regardless of what the legislated world includes.
All diesel fuel blends “gel” at low temperatures. A 2% blend of biodiesel changes the gel temp only slightly.
In order to burn diesel during the winter, it must be blended with No.1 diesel (kerosene). The fact that the buses in Minnesota are having the problem is because their fuel supplier did not add enough kerosene to the fuel. Biodiesel is not the culprit.
Here’s another one.
Compact Fluorescent light Bulbs might emit harmful levels of UV light (in addition to containing potentially dangerous mercury levels).
This is still being studied and might turn out to be safe as long as you are not too close for long periods of time. But the law of unintended consequences should always be in play for these green products since emotion rather than logic drives most of these decisions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7661462.stm
Tallbloke said
“I was disappointed to hear Obama say yesterday that we should get our fuel in the future from wind, sun and the LAND, that is more biodiesel.
I didn’t hear that in the inauguration speech, do you have a reference?”
I fell asleep after the first five minutes of waffle and rhetoric as he sounds exactly like Tony Blair-however before I did I’m sure I heard Obama say the word ‘soil’ rather than land. My immediate reaction was using heat pumps to extract warmth from the soil but perhaps he did mean bio fuel.
I entirely agree about burning rubbish-however most greens are against it as they think that will encourage people to treat it as disposable rather than recyclable.
TonyB
As a long time diesel and heavy duty mechanic, I can say with authority that the biodiesel content would not have made any difference in this specific case. As has been said by others already, diesel fuel can be big trouble in very low temps: Not to mention the engine and transmission oils! That is why all truckers leave their engine idling when up north. 50% kerosene (max!) is and should be the only solution to the high gel point issue, though that leads to wear and very poor fuel economy. Additives help, but only barely. Gasoline can destroy a diesel fuel system very quickly and is no longer a suitable choice. I can see that the maintenance guys looking after these buses probably just told the managers there that they could get them running, but it will take a lot of time, going around with Tiger torches, and likely will cause 25% of them to break. Not worth the effort. I would hazard a guess that up until they mandated environmental practises, they left them idling overnight when the temps were low. Just a guess though. Just a personal note, I also tried biodiesel but abandoned it after my fuel lines started dissolving. Any diesel before 1996 will have that issue. Some even newer.
Finally a topic I am an authority on! LOL
Cheers all!
E.M.Smith:
What about the new clean burning diesels? Can those burn kerosene or jet fuel without damaging the engine or some other important system?
Thanks
A simple fix: change the school year so that the kids attend from March through November, rather than September through May.
GeoS (00:49:36) :Hmmm… Could it be they’ve been trying out biodiesel in jet fuel? Hope not, but any thoughts?
Its been tested: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7800000/newsid_7806100/7806107.stm
in fact “The International Air Transport Association says it wants a 10th of plane fuel to come from bio fuels by 2017. ”
Its a good trick the airlines come under political pressure to cut CO2 so they make promises and invest a few £€$ in research and hope the science and politics will have moved on by time 2017 comes, think thats a good bet.
Think Richard Branson is putting big money into researching it.
Just to further clarify one point my wife has reminded me of: The fuel system in most diesels returns heated fuel to the fuel tank thus keeping the fuel system warm while running. No need for expensive fuel line heaters if you leave it idling. Diesels sip a tiny amount of fuel at idle, unlike gasoline engines, and can be idled for days and days. I once had to idle the Jetta while waiting 30 hours stuck in a snow drift @ur momisugly -40! Damned fine car…
Smart lady my Mrs!
tallbloke (02:57:30) :
“….a reference?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/obama_inauguration/7840646.stm
“We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”
I love this blog. As quoted previously- “Change we already got used to.”
There are also generating plants that burn elephant grass, both online and in the pipeline(pun intended)….
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article563622.ece
http://www.carboncommentary.com/2007/09/15/6
…and one for Alan the Brit-
http://www.bical.net/news_the-grass-could-be-greener-for-farmers-new-%E2%80%98energy-crop%E2%80%99-opportunities-in-the-south-west_28_03112008.htm
Alan the Brit (and any other Brits reading this)
I also live in the West country and am trying to find out if it is unusually cold this winter here (for non Brits the west country is a peninsula sticking into the Atlantic and English channel and is generally considered to be the warmest winter place in the UK)
Do you live anywhere near the coast, as down here in South Devon some are saying it is the coldest on the coast for thirty years-not the offical Met office 10 years- and certainly we are doing an awful lot of ice scraping from car windscreens this year-normally a very rare event.
I believe the seas surrounding the West country are unusually cold this year which means our free radiator is not doing its usual job by keeping us 2 or 3 degrees C warmer than inland. Anyone got any stats to back up this anecdotal evidence?
TonyB
I’ve noticed in Calgary that many of the bus companies also idle their vehicles overnight when the temperatures drop to the -20 C range. During high gas prices, just think of the dollars going up to make sure these vehicles were running the next morning. Multiply that by all the areas that do that, and a cold night is just watching tax money go up in smoke. There has got to be a better and cheaper way.
ASTM (The American Society for Testing and Materials) regulates specifications for diesel fuel. The standard for diesel fuel is ASTM D975 Standard Specification for Diesel Fuel Oils. In this standard is Annex X.4 TENTH PERCENTILE MINIMUM AMBIENT AIR TEMPERATURES FOR THE UNITED STATES
(EXCEPT HAWAII). FIG. X4.4 January—10th Percentile Minimum Ambient Air Temperatures shows that for Minnisota, the maximum cloud point for No. 2 Diesel fuel is -34C, which is well below the cloud point achievable with biodiesel as a blend component.
Suppliers of diesel fuel in these areas should comment on what they do to reduce the Cloud Point of diesel fuel to meet this standard. The Cloud Point, and its function equivalent, the Cold Filter Plugging Point (a self evident test name) are tests used to predice the minimum temperature at which a fuel will flow in diesel equipment under ambient (in this case very cold) conditions.
shouldn’t it be “ECOLIARS”? LOL
not to mention the increased fuel use/GHG emissions, doesn’t idling the engines all night long increase wear?
This is a classic example of what happens when you put government morons in charge of something.
Alan the Brit (01:51:19) :
“The old trick used in the sub-tropical UK was……”
You may try to promote the UK as a liveable part of the world as much as you like but to call it sub-tropical is a bit over the top! Or were you referring to Gibraltar?