UK Supermarket Selling BioDiesel

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AccordGuy
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Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:47 am
Location: West Sussex, UK
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UK Supermarket Selling BioDiesel

Post by AccordGuy »

While working out in Reading I went to fuel up and noticed that the Morrisons supermarket was selling B30 biodiesel alongside the regular stuff on all their pumps. This is a 30% blend of biodiesel, made in part from reclaimed cooking oil. The price was exactly the same as regular fossil diesel and a sticker on the pump warned users to check with their engine manufacturer before using the fuel.

B5 is universally ratified for use by all engine manufacturers in Europe (it's been included in the EN590 standard for European standard diesel) but manufacturers are divided on whether their engines can use B20 or B30 safely. Reading some forums, it seems to depend on the type of fuel pump used with some high pressure common rail pumps being incompatible.

There's also quite a lot of chatter around the fact that biodiesel dissolves sediment in cars that have used fossil diesel for a long time and this quickly clogs the fuel filter, requiring one or two replacements before things are cleaned out and return to normal.

Apparently, 113 of the supermarket chains stores have been recently converted to supply B30 so provided there isn't a backlash of complaints by those not aware that their old cars may suffer from filter clogging, then it might become a mainstream fuel quite quickly. The reason I mention this is that last year there was a fiasco in the South of the UK where a refinery accidentally introduced a contaminant into a batch of fuel that was distributed to supermarket petrol pumps all over the South of the UK. It caused hundreds of petrol cars to stop working as the contaminant coated the O2 sensor, breaking the fuel computer controls on the engine (a 300+ Pound repair). If there was any hint of such a repeat headline because of filter clogging attributed (even wrongly) to using B30, then there will be a backlash against B30 and Morrisons. They all want to use fuel as a loss-leader to get shoppers into their store and they want to capitalise on appearing "green" but headlines like "supermarket green fuel causes hundreds to break down!" would be a PR disaster. Punters at the supermarket pumps never read the labels. They'll just fill up and a few weeks later will start having problems with blocked fuel filters between scheduled services and blame the new fuel... We still have endless problems with people putting petrol in diesel cars by accident, let alone people having to choose correctly between two types of diesel to avoid unscheduled maintenance on their cars.
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