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I am writing in response to Charter Wells Jr.'s letter ["Tidewater biodiesel plant would add to our problems," Nov. 28]. I would beg the writer to do a bit of research concerning the difference between biodiesel and ethanol.
Ethanol is a distilled alcohol fuel usually made from corn or sugar cane; it's used as
The proposed Tidewater plant will be making biodiesel. The raw material for biodiesel can range from straight animal fat to pure soybean or canola oil. The process for making biodiesel was invented in the mid-1800s and was used widely in South Africa before World War II.
Rudolf Diesel's first engine (1885) was designed to run on peanut-oil fuel in addition to petroleum fuel oil. In fact, Diesel said this of vegetable-oil fuels in a 1912 speech: "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal-tar products of the present time."
Most diesel engines today can run on biodiesel. Recently, Caterpillar has given the green light to biodiesel as a safe alternative to fuel its engines.
The byproduct of biodiesel production is glycerol or glycerin. Glycerin is one of the most universal industrial compounds on the planet. It has no known negative environmental impacts and can be composted in one's garden.
There is no question that this Smiling Earth plant will have a large environmental impact in the area, and it'll have to be watched closely.
After all, 320 million gallons of biodiesel production will require 320 million gallons of raw material. That's a lot of chicken fat and vegetable oil--roughly 900 truck-tanker loads a week.
That alone would have an impact on any community.
Tom Beals Spotsylvania