Oryxe Wins First-Ever Government Verification of NOx-Reducing
Additive for Biodiesel Blend
www.worldfuels.com
March 12, 2007
by Jack Peckham
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has officially
verified that a specially-additized blend of 20% biodiesel in regular U.S. EPA ULSD
fuel can meet the nitrogen oxides (NOx) reduction requirements for Texas Low Emissions Diesel (Tx-LED) as required in most of Texas.
Key to the verification: ORYXE “OR-LED3” additive, which earlier won TCEQ “Tx-LED”
verification for non-biodiesel blend.
The only difference between Tx-LED additized regular diesel fuel and Tx-LED additized
B20 blend is that a higher dosage of “OR-LED3” is required for the B20 Tx-LED blend,
as ORYXE CEO Jim Cleary told Diesel Fuel News in an interview.
The OR-LED2 dosage for “Tx-LED” B20 blend is at least 20 milliliters per gallon,
or about 1 tablespoon.
Winning the latest TCEQ approval required rigorous
testing at the U.S. EPA-recognized
emissions test labs at West Virginia University, under a standard test protocol
mandated by TCEQ.
The verification means that refiners, terminal operators and fuel blenders only
need to follow the specific dosage blending instructions as specified in the TCEQ
verification. Both truck splash-blending or terminal rack metering are possible.
Since the same OR-LED3 additive can be used for either non-biodiesel or B20 blend,
there’s no extra infrastructure cost for making a B20 version of Tx-LED diesel fuel.
Tx-LED is mandatory in 110 east Texas counties including major metro areas, and
is similar to the low-aromatics, high-cetane California Air Resources Board “CARB
diesel.” Some Texas refiners qualify via additization while others use refining
schemes. ORYXE hopes that the TCEQ “OR-LED3” verifications will support marketing
efforts in other states that face ozone-reduction deadlines from U.S. EPA, as well
as states that are keen on biodiesel. Missouri, for example, is the U.S.’s biggest
biodiesel producer. “Having TCEQ certification allows us to talk to [air pollution]
regulators in other states,” Cleary explains. “This helps them to recognize there’s
a cost-effective solution to the NOx bump” with B-20 blends.
While Cleary wouldn’t specify a precise per-gallon cost of OR-LED3 necessary to
overcome the B-20 NOx bump, he said it’s “pennies per gallon.”
Meantime, ORYXE is “75% of the way to complete what we need to do for CARB verification”
to qualify as “CARB diesel,” a blend of ordinary EPA ULSD fuel mixed with the OR-LED
additive.
Such verification eventually could open the door to more CARB diesel supplies in
a California diesel market that’s chronically tight.
Eventually, ORYXE might seek CARB verification of an additized low-NOx biodiesel
blend as well. But that depends upon CARB coming up with a new regulatory scheme
to ensure biodiesel meets emissions performance requirements. “Scoping” data that
ORYXE earlier presented to CARB indicates that a properly-additized B20 blend probably
could overcome the typical NOx increase problem with biodiesel blend.
(Note to printed issue readers: the TCEQ’s approval document can be found at this
hyperlink:
www.tceq.state.tx.us/assets/public/implementation/air/sip/texled/TXLED-A-00008.pdf.)
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