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Thoughts on this email from our marina operators.


johnmck

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We have taken the decision to change our fuel supply from red diesel to a more environmentally friendly and sustainable fuel. It has a better shelf life, does not suffer from diesel bug and can confidently mix with any remaining fuel in your tanks.

The product burns cleaner in engines and diesel heating systems, but does cost a few pennies more. The numerous benefits to this change, however, far outweigh the slight increase in price.

 

I’ve summarised some of the main HVO advantages below for quick reference. I have also attached the HVO brochure if you fancy a bit of reading.

 

  • Crown HVO is a FAME free / Bio free diesel made from 100% renewable, sustainable, fully traceable raw materials (such as waste cooking oil)
  • Crown HVO comes with a ISCC sustainability certificate and statement, providing an independent certification for the environmental credentials of the fuel
  • Crown HVO reduces greenhouse gases by ‘net’ 90%, significantly reducing your operational carbon footprint.
  • Crown HVO is a drop in replacement for regular diesel / gas oil meeting EN15940 & ASTM D975 standards
  • Crown HVO reduces both CO2, PM (particulate matter), NOx & SOx emissions
  • Crown HVO is biodegradable
  • Crown HVO performs excellent in extreme cold weather with a higher cetane number (up to 90) and lower cloud point (-32deg) so less chance of waxing in extreme temperatures
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5 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Sounds good to me, more marinas should do it.

 

Yes, this should be compulsory everywhere on the waterways..

Award that marina a gold star (or should it be a green star?)

  • Greenie 1
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2 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Using arable land to grow fuel crops seems a bit dodgy. 

 

Nothing new but if it takes off properly I wonder if the Trump wall is going to be big enough. 

 

I think we need to get things prioritised correctly. 

 

If we don't deal first with the CO2 problem, there won't be much point in worrying about food production. 

  • Greenie 1
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38 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Using arable land to grow fuel crops seems a bit dodgy. 

 

Nothing new but if it takes off properly I wonder if the Trump wall is going to be big enough. 

Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is a second-generation, synthetic bio fuel as a drop-in alternative to fossil diesel, meeting EN 15940 standards and Fuel Quality Directive 2009/30/EC Annex II.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrotreated_vegetable_oil

 

HVO is made through a two-stage process known as hydrotreatment, where feedstocks are saturated with hydrogen at high temperatures (over 300oC), followed by a stage of isomerisation/cracking to give the end product the desired fuel qualities.

 

HVO is produced from waste plant and animal matter. Plants are grown and oils are taken away and used for their main purpose, recollected and then converted into HVO.

Edited by nbfiresprite
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31 minutes ago, MtB said:

I think we need to get things prioritised correctly. 

 

If we don't deal first with the CO2 problem, there won't be much point in worrying about food production. 

 

Are you sure that's not the other way around? If we don't produce enough food, there will be fewer people to cause a CO2 problem.

 

Hang on, I see your plan...

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If it reduces particulates and all the other nasties then my next car might be a diesel. At the very least it could be an answer to every HGV having 5 tons of batteries and a 50 mile range (I made those figures up so don't try to find the source!)

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5 minutes ago, Bee said:

If it reduces particulates and all the other nasties then my next car might be a diesel. At the very least it could be an answer to every HGV having 5 tons of batteries and a 50 mile range (I made those figures up so don't try to find the source!)

 

I doubt HVO reduces particulates. It does however AIUI, reduce the biggie that dwarfs all other pollution concerns, CO2.

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Recycling cooking oil into fuel reduces CO2 in the sense that instead of just letting the cooking oil break down unused, releasing the CO2 anyway, we can release the CO2 and take the place of ancient C being released by buring fossils. And biofuel grown on brownfield land is carbon neutral (assuming we aren't deforesting to make more space for other agricuture). WVO is a win win win.

 

But I can't see how on earth waste cooking oil could produce any significant fraction of our liquid fuel requirements? Please correct me if I'm wrong but here's my napkin maths:

Five litres of sunfllower oil would produce at least 100 meals I'd guess. If each person in the UK ate two deep fried meals per day and saved all the cooking oil, they'd produce on average about 0.1 litres of waste cooking oil per day. Assuming 0.1 litre of oil produces 0.1 litre of diesel. If you drive a very fuel efficient car, you can travel almost a mile on 0.1 litre of diesel. That doesn't sound like it will touch sides to me. So WVO is great, and we should use it where we can, but we shouldn't allow it to become "greenwashing" whereby oil companies just put a couple of drops in their fossil fuels so they can advertise thier fuels as "green".

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1 hour ago, MtB said:

 

I doubt HVO reduces particulates. It does however AIUI, reduce the biggie that dwarfs all other pollution concerns, CO2.

 

It claims to reduce NOx and particulates. If it burns better then it will reduce the particulates. I think the claim was for a significant but not huge reduction.

I am less convinced about the NOx as this mostly relates to the maximum temperatures and pressures reached, but I think I read that sometimes HVO allows the timing to be retarded a bit which can reduce NOx.

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5 minutes ago, dmr said:

but I think I read that sometimes HVO allows the timing to be retarded a bit which can reduce NOx.

But that implies engine adjustments which means that if you regularly switch between HVO and conventional diesel, depending on what is available when you need to fill up, then you won't gain the full benefit of HVO.

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3 minutes ago, David Mack said:

But that implies engine adjustments which means that if you regularly switch between HVO and conventional diesel, depending on what is available when you need to fill up, then you won't gain the full benefit of HVO.

 

I suspect most boaters would not want to mess with timing, also possible warrantee and legal issues (messing with an emissions related adjustment).

Also retarding might undo the reduction in particulates.

 

Ideally the move to HVO should be a one way process as its stability is a big advantage, so having some old bio diesel in the tank and slowly decomposing and generating diesel bug defeats the object.

 

Like all things it would be good to know what the real world benefits of HVO are, the marketing people usually overstate the advantages which is not good as it casts doubt on what are real improvements.

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23 minutes ago, johnmck said:

A further email re cost.

 

 

I can now confirm the fuel price increase, our new price will be .92p per litre for heating, the propulsion or split will remain the same at .49p per litre.

49p is cheap.

Edited by PD1964
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