Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 5, May 2003

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Veggie-fueled diesels

By MATTHEW PREUSCH

For those wary of burning up finite fossil fuels, but unwilling to sever their attachment to the internal combustion engine, Dan Freeman might have a solution. He suggests you fill your tank with biodiesel, a vegetable oil-based fuel that is emerging as a reliable, if pricey, alternative to petroleum.

Freeman sells biodiesel out of a makeshift fueling station (an old van) at Ballard's Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuel Werks. The clean-burning fuel works in any diesel engine without modification, and, as a bonus, makes the car's exhaust smell like a fast-food kitchen.

Freeman has been selling biodiesel since 2000, and he is a strong believer in its relative advantages over regular diesel. It's cleaner, he says, emitting none of the pollutants, such as carbon monoxide or hydrocarbons, that result from burning regular petrol. And biodiesel can be made from readily available, renewable resources, such as sunflower seeds or soap byproducts.

"It's just like growing fuel," he says.

The idea of using vegetable oil in diesel engines is not new. When Dr. Rudolf Diesel introduced his engine at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris his fuel of choice was peanut oil, though he intended it to run on a variety of fuels, according to Joshua Tickell's book, "From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank," a how-to primer on vegetable oil propulsion.

Dr. Dan's serves a handful of industrial customers who have decided to switch their fleets of diesel cars, trucks and equipment to biodiesel.

One such company is Seattle Tree Preservation of Lake City. Owner John Hushagen decided late last year to start filling the tanks of his five trucks and five brush chippers with biodiesel. At $2.77 a gallon, biodiesel is more expensive than its traditional cousin, but Hushagen said his bottom line has not suffered, and that his decision was one of principle, not profits.

"When you run trucks and brush chippers in the neighborhood, you're sort of foiling the air shed," he said. "We used to stink like any other industrial plant, and now we actually smell like popcorn or a deep fat fryer."

Despite its potential promise, selling biodiesel currently does not pay the bills at Dr. Dan's. He originally opened in 1990 as an auto repair shop, and he continues to work on all manner of cars in his cramped garage.

Freeman, 42, is a Ballard High School alumnus whose first job after graduating in 1979 was at a fisheries supply company on Salmon Bay. While still a student, Freeman remembers witnessing the fuel rationing and sacrifices of the fuel shortage of the 1970s, and decided, like many others at the time, that the country was too dependent on fossil fuels.

It wasn't until 1996 that he started selling an alternative fuel, compressed natural gas, or CNG, to his customers at Dr. Dan's. He introduced biodiesel in the fall of 2000, and it's clearly become the most exciting part of his business. Currently, he sells about 7,000 gallons a month. To make the enterprise profitable, he said, he'll need to raise that number to 9,000.

Several times a day one of his 200 clients that power their personal cars with biodiesel pull up to fill their tanks or just share alternative fuel gossip. Almost all of them drive Volkswagen diesels.

"It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork and know everything about biodiesel," he said.

Sooz Appel, the owner of Nuts 'N Bolts, which handles recycling from apartment buildings in North Seattle, said she takes her 2003 Jetta to Dr. Dan's about once every two weeks. It's not cheap: filling up her 15-gallon tank costs more than $40, but she gets up to 50 miles per gallon.

"I bought a Jetta diesel specifically so that i could start using biodiesel and start getting off the petroleum trough," she said. "He has a lot of customers, and we're real happy."

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For more information on biodiesel, visit the Web site www.biodiesel.org, or Dan Freeman's Web site, www.fuelwerks.com.