Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Diesel Fuel Substitute

In a recent article from the Financial Times, a few firms are converting methane that occurs in landfills to liquid bio-methane as a substitute for diesel fuel. The firms are trying to get large trucking firms to change from using diesel fuel to liquid bio-methane, which is priced less than diesel and generated locally to the trucking companies. The fuel is supposed to be better in terms of efficiency than diesel and costs less, so why is it not more popular?

The big problem will be for long haul trucking firms that do not have enough places to buy liquid bio-methane. The fuel infrastructure is set up for diesel. As more fueling stations have liquid bio-methane as an option, then long haul trucking firms will be more apt to switch from diesel to liquid bio-methane. So the issue is not that liquid bio-methane is not efficient or cost effective, but rather an issue of the amount of places that long haul trucks can go to fill up when their tanks are running low.

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