consolejockey

I bought my first tank of biodiesel today. I had been wanting to drive out to Austin Biofuels since I found out about the place, but it’s on the outskirts of town. It didn’t make much since to drive all the way across town, using a lot of fuel, to buy environmentally friendly fuel. Recently I learned that EcoWise had partnered with Austin Biofuels to sell biodiesel from their South Congress shop. Now all I had to do was drive downtown to get on the biodiesel bandwagon.

So this afternoon I drove down to “SoCo” as all the cool kids are calling it now, and said “Fill ‘er up Phil,” which was odd because the woman behind the counter was not named Phil. At any rate I moved my Golf TDI to the back of the store, where sat a small trailer. The trailer held a small scale gas pump and tank, a portable diesel station. I watched as the woman who’s name was not named Phil filled up my tank. The smell coming from the pump was not the usual stinky petroleum smell, but that of vegetable oil. A little of spilled on the ground, and the woman commented “That would be bad if it was gas, huh?”

“It’s still flammable,” I said. “It has to be.”

“Oh yeah,” she said “But it doesn’t smell bad.”

Assuming biodiesel was safe would be an easy and dangerous mistake to make, I thought. This stuff not only smells harmless, but kind of like food. Yet, it’s not harmless, it’s very combustible.

I also brought a five gallon gas can with me, so I could “splash mix” biodiesel in my car’s tank later. I plan to splash mix it to a 80% regular diesel to 20% biodiesel mix. B100 (biodiesel 100%) currently sells for $3.55 a gallon, more than a dollar more a gallon than regular diesel. Regularly buying a full tank of it is not something I can really afford right now, but I can make my own B20 without it effecting my pocket book too much.