Testimonial: Ken & Mariann Carrasco
My wife Mariann and I own a 32-foot powerboat which is powered by twin turbocharged Diesel engines. We keep the boat in Bellingham and do the usual family activities including camping and fishing, and we also donate a lot of trips at auctions for non-profit organizations because it helps them and we get to meet some new and interesting people. I'm also a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and will be using the boat to augment regular Coast Guard activities.
Our boat was built by Bayliner in 1994 and has a semi-displacement hull. This means we can cruise relatively fast, at about 15 knots, but we also consume relatively greater amounts of fuel as well. However, because we try to be aware consumers, three concerns about using petroleum Diesel began dogging us shortly after we purchased this boat:
- Because of our backgrounds, we are concerned about the impact of our boating activities on the water quality and air quality of this beautiful part of earth called Whatcom County and the San Juan Islands. I'm a marine biologist (with a master's degree in Dungeness crab biology from the University of Washington) and Mariann is a wildlife biologist.
- My experience as a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard has given me a geopolitical perspective - among other similar activities, I was stationed aboard a polar icebreaker and monitored Soviet Navy activities north of Siberia. I'm aware of our fuel crisis, and I'm convinced that both national and global problems are coming our way unless we think about our use of petroleum.
- Several members of our family have shown signs of chemical sensitivity, and Diesel fumes exacerbate the situation. Like many other powerboats, we often encounter the "station wagon" effect where at cruising speeds our exhaust will be circulate forward into the habitable part of the boat.
Fortunately, shortly after we purchased our boat in 2003, we discovered biodiesel and Whole Energy Fuels which helped alleviate these environmental, geopolitical, and health concerns.
I quickly found that myths and misinformation are circulating in the public about biodiesel, and of course I did not want to cause some very expensive problems with my two engines. Dependable fuel for our engines are also a major safety concern, as it should be for any boater and especially when children are involved. So we performed a due diligence process on both biodiesel as a product and on Whole Energy as a company, and we ultimately not only started using biodiesel in our boat . . . but we also decided to invest in Whole Energy itself.
During my research about the product, I found that my main issue would be the tendency of biodiesel to act as a solvent and mobilize accumulated petroleum diesel "crud" in the tanks. So before I started adding biodiesel to my tanks, I took the following two steps.
First, I arranged with a local Bellingham company, PetroClean, to come to my boat and clean ("polish" is the jargon) my existing fuel. Because Bayliner did not install access ports in the two 100-gallon fuel tanks, I also had PetroClean install ports in the tanks and they used brushes and a vacuum to clean as much of the existing petroleum diesel "crud" as possible. (This is a step which should be done with older boats anyway no matter what the fuel).
Second, I replaced the stock "spin-on" primary fuel filters with turbine style filters with an integral fuel/water separator and with a higher capacity (so it would filter more fuel per hour and also over the lifetime of a filter element before the element needs replacement). I also added vacuum gauges to these filters so I would know to change the elements before symptoms of fuel starvation developed.
(For the non-technical: the "primary" fuel filter is the first filter the fuel passes through after leaving the fuel tank, and the "secondary" filter is the second filter the fuel encounters and is located on the engine itself.)
My engines have loved biodiesel; I swear that they run smoother especially at the maximum levels I've used, around B50. I'm very happy with the performance of biodiesel in my engines over the past several boating seasons and I have not had any mechanical problems at all.
My family report the fumes are much more tolerable than straight Diesel while we are cruising. Higher levels of biodiesel have proportionally alleviated the "station wagon" effect.
Besides the greater solvency of biodiesel, two other reported concerns include stability over time (because recreational boats sit idle much more than working boats or land-based vehicles) and biodiesel's reported tendency to attract and accumulate water. To test these concerns, I exposed my boat to the worst possible scenario over the winter of 2006/2007: I purposefully left my tanks mostly empty of fuel over the winter which typically results in a great amount of water condensation within the tanks. In the spring, after six months, I had the fuel tested and found that the fuel was still potent (and later found that it worked just as well underway as fresh fuel). In addition, no water was detected in the fuel sample and, later, I observed no accumulation of water in the fuel/water separator which corroborated that laboratory result.
In this initial phase of the maturing biodiesel industry, the consumer must question the quality of the fuel and inform themselves about the product and the production process of the supplier. I was impressed by the attention Whole Energy applied to ensure a consistently high quality product which I could rely upon.
Regarding our investment with Whole Energy -- I found Atul Deshmane and the other personnel with Whole Energy to be very knowledgeable and passionate about the potential of their fuel. Their passion is coupled with realism and the willingness to freely discuss both the pros and cons of biodiesel as a fuel. This combination of expertise and integrity very much impressed us. We felt their business model is sound and so we decided to invest in the company.
Please feel free to contact me at bluemountainfarm@yahoo.com if you have any questions. Oh, by the way, I am also using Whole Energy biodiesel in our Diesel tractor on our property near Acme, at about the B70 level, and am very happy with the performance of the fuel in that implement as well.
Ken Carrasco
Blue Mountain Farm
P.O. Box 108
6324 Saxon Road
Acme, WA 98220
www.bluemountainfarm.com
