June 2005 eNews Bulletin

MSU Researchers Say New Crop Could Produce Affordable Biodiesel

by Walt Williams
May 19, 2005

It's a gamble that farmer Bruce Wright believes is worth taking.

For the first time this year, Wright planted 50 acres of the European oilseed camelina on his farm along Springhill Road.

The reason? The plant is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the heart, and that's something people will pay for.

"It's got a lot of properties that sound like they can be very beneficial," he said.

But Montana State University researchers see another benefit.

Camelina can be used to make biodiesel, an environmentally friendly alternative to diesel fuel. And they say it can be produced for much less than other biodiesel crops, for the first time making the fuel competitive in price with its petroleum counterpart.

Soaring gas prices at the pumps have led to renewed interest in alternative fuels as a way of curbing the nation's reliance on foreign oil. President Bush visited a biodiesel plant in West Virginia Monday to encourage the development of biodiesel and ethanol. Ethanol is blended with gasoline so it will burn cleaner.

In Montana, state lawmakers recently passed a law requiring all gasoline to be blended with 10 percent ethanol.

Alternative fuels are a major focus of MSU's Institute for Biobased Products, which is developing crops that can be used to make biodiesel, ethanol and biolubricants to replace motor oils.

The institute sees a lot of promise in camelina, which is new to Montana but has been grown in Europe for a long time. The state's cool and dry climate is well suited for growing the crop.

"We believe it has the potential to be substantial crop in Montana over the next year," said Gary Iverson, executive director of the Great Northern Growers Cooperative, whose members have planted about 700 acres of the oilseed in their fields this year.

Still, the potential Iverson sees in camelina is as a food crop. Its healthy oil is more likely to end up in frying pans than in fuel tanks, and the meal made from it can be fed to livestock and fish to increase their omega-3 levels.

"What people should really be doing with camelina is eating it, not making biodiesel out of it," MSU plant pathologist and institute co-director Alice Pilgeram said, explaining the problem with marketing the plant as a fuel crop.

Currently farmers can make more money selling camelina as a crop to eat rather than a fuel to burn, she said.

Biodiesel made with traditional crops -- such as soy -- costs around $3 a gallon at the pumps. But biodiesel made from camelina could be sold for $2 a gallon, bringing it in line with regular diesel.

Regardless whether camelina lives up to its promise, the institute sees a bright future for biobased products.

Former director Duane Johnson has already developed several biobased hydraulic oils for motor vehicles, substances he said are biodegradable and are as much as 370,000 times less toxic than an equal amount of petroleum.

"We got everything you need to really make a vehicle operate," he said.

The problem remains price. Biobased lubricants are more expensive than their petroleum counterparts.

But Johnson said consumers will make up that cost through longer engine lives and cleaner emissions.

"When you put it all together, we are cheaper than petroleum even though you pay a little more up front," he said.