Menu

Cincinnati soy biodiesel plant fueling the trend

by Natalie Walston

It was the end of August in 2005 and the city of Cincinnati faced a major dilemma: Hurricane Katrina had created a shortage of diesel fuel coming from the Gulf of Mexico. City officials had to put on a fireworks show at the annual Labor Day celebration; more than a million people were expected downtown in the Queen City, and many of the attendees would arrive by the city's Metro bus service. So the bus service had to do something they've never done before: buy an alternative fuel.

"They needed 18 truckloads of biodiesel," said Mack Findley, biodiesel business manager of Peter Cremer North America, the largest soy biodiesel plant in the country. The Cincinnati plant, which makes the Nexsol brand, produced 15 million gallons of soy biodiesel last year, and projections for 2006 have doubled.

The Ohio Soybean Council (OSC) said soy biodiesel, made from soybeans, is the state's leading alternative fuel and can be used in diesel engines with no modifications. It burns cleaner, increases engine lubricity and reduces U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Findley said it's for those reasons that Cincinnati Metro continues to fill its buses with the diesel fuel alternative.

"There's no smoke whatsoever from the exhaust," Findley said. "It shows riders that they are being environmentally responsible by using a soy-based biodiesel."

Columbus has followed Cincinnati's lead as the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) announced last month that its fleet of 234 buses are powered by soy biodiesel blends that go as high as B90 (90 percent soy biodiesel, 10 percent diesel). The OSC said this is the highest blend used by a transit fleet in the United States.

"We have become a leader in the field but didn't really realize it at the time," said Don Makarius, COTA's director of vehicle maintenance and engineering.

OSC has said that soy biodiesel is becoming more cost competitive. Market demands also create price fluctuations because soybeans are a publicly traded commodity, and the price of diesel fluctuates as well.

But, when you add up the benefits to the environment and Ohio's economy, Findley said, there's no reason not to choose soy biodiesel. In fact, he's done his own math.

"In 2005 we produced 15 million gallons. It took 115 million pounds of soybean oil. It was 10.5 million bushels of soybeans grown on 263,000 acres of farmland, so that's 526 farms with seven jobs created per farm," he said. "So 3,700 farm-related jobs were generated last year because of soy biodiesel production at one plant."

Photo caption: The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) uses a soy biodiesel blend to power the 234 buses in its fleet. COTA recently added soy biodiesel messages on the backs and insides of some buses.