Hi Keith, and thank you for a very in depth answer.
You're welcome, I'm glad it's useful.
First of all I believe the background is the fact that all fuel companies in Sweden (in the whole Scandinavia I think) decided to start mixing biofuel in all types fuel to get an "environmental response" immediately. That is, the diesel we buy always contains a part of biodiesel. It also mean that the coastal gas stations hardly can get fuel without bioproducts.
Quite a lot of countries are doing what I think the French did first, adding 2-5% biodiesel to all diesel fuel, mainly for the improved lubrication, since there's so much less sulphur in the diesel fuel now.
The four brands used in the article are Volvo Penta, Yanmar, Marine Power and Cummins Mercruiser. All of them clearly states that biodiesel is dangerous for a marine engine and they also say (again, all of them) that if any engine is operated on bioproducts the garantuees are cancelled.
I don't think they have the legal power to do that. They can refuse to pay up on a particular guarantee if they can prove that the damage was directly caused by the bioproduct in the fuel, otherwise they have to pay.
One weird thing is that all Cummins diesels are supposed to follow the Environmental Protection Agency's demands, and still they do not want the engines to be used with biofuel.
Similar case with Yanmar.
I'm going to call the magazine monday morning, and ask how they can totally rely upon the manufacturers without _any_ source criticism at all. It doesn't matter if I'm for or against biofuel, it's a well done example in pretty bad journalism.
Pretty bad journalism on the one side, and industry spin on the other, the two go together.
I will ask them to make a second research, and suggest them to call Ageratec here in Sweden or Finnish Neste and have a second opinion.
Find some German sources too.
I know people running high performance John Deere's on biofuel only, why would a marine engine be an exception?
Not an exception, there isn't any technical basis for it. Given the time, I'm sure I can dig up a bunch of cases of marine diesels using biodiesel. Does anyone here know of any reason why, unlike all other diesels, marine diesels can't use biodiesel?
This surely is industry spin. But why? What's being protected?
Cummins says one thing in the US and the opposite thing in Sweden. Someone should ask them why. If your journos don't want to do it, maybe you could consider doing it yourself. People here might be able to give you some help on the American side.
Yanmar says one thing in Sweden, but in Japan and internationally, Yanmar supports biodiesel use. I'll have to qualify that a bit. They show support for it, including sponsorship and so on, but I don't think that means they're committed to it. Think "corporate image adjustment" rather than a corporate eco-awakening or something.
Yanmar doesn't know very much about biodiesel or biodiesel issues, like the rest of Japan, they're five years behind the rest of the world with biodiesel, or 10 years or 20, depending how you look at it (in spite of all the cutting-edge Japanese patents - that's all they are, patents). Eg, Yanmar doesn't know it, but their support extends to the use of some very poor-grade biodiesel. I know it's poor-grade stuff because I know quite a lot about that company and I tested some of their fuel. There's no quality control in Japan, and any awareness of quality issues here comes from JtF (not exaggerating).
Nonetheless Yanmar supports biodiesel, as you can see here:
http://www.yanmar.co.jp/english/bdf/
Huh. They keep changing their urls. That page used to have this url, a few weeks ago: www.yanmar.co.jp/en/index.html. The new suffix, bdf, definitely means biodiesel - biodiesel is always called BDF here, Bio-Diesel Fuel. Yet that page is not only about biodiesel, in fact it doesn't even mention biodiesel (five of the six items are about biodiesel though, if you click down one level).
Anyway. I think Yanmar's main international business is marine diesels, more than their tractors and rotavators. Are they saying marine diesels are different to the other diesels they think should be using biodiesel fuel (with no concern for fuel quality, though they won't understand that point)? Does Nippon Denso (a partner in the Fuel Injection Equipment Manufacturers, FIEM) agree that the fuel injectors etc on Yanmar marine diesels should not be exposed to biodiesel, not even B2 or B5? Or at least not in Sweden?
If you'd like to ask them that I could probably help, write to me offlist if you like.
Volvo's ethically challenged response to perceived market threats from biodiesel has a notorious history. See:
http://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=Olsson&[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Olsson
I don't know about Marine Power, but two out of the four companies are contradicting themselves and a third is not to be trusted at all. Do those three make up the majority of the market share in Sweden?
By the way, the Biofuel list and list members had a lot to do with forcing an apology and retraction from Volvo in the "Swedish study" case, reluctant and graceless though it was, and Chalmers University withdrew the rigged study and published a retraction on their website.
Just by way of encouragement. :-)
Best
Keith
Regards,
Sven
2007/6/9, Keith Addison <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Hello Sven
>With a lot of frustration I just read an article about using
>biodiesel in marine engines. They (the engine manufacturers)
Was that engine manufacturers in general, or did it name them?
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