Is green oil ready to be fast-tracked to the mainstream?

While on the subways of New York City, one would never guess that environmentally safe "salad oil" has replaced toxic petroleum hydraulic fluids in the elevators that bring riders to and from the platforms, system-wide.

The fact is that several years ago, New York City Transit made it mandatory that their elevator oils be rapidly biodegradable.

We found nobody at that Authority that can claim that they were present when this decision was made. However, it is likely that their managers realized that oil spills in that system are all too frequent occurrences; and that with the use of bio-lubricants, they do not require costly clean-up.

As founder of the Green Oil Company, this author came upon a request for proposal to supply that transit agency with several thousands of gallons of rapidly biodegradable hydraulic (elevator) oil.

At the time, Green Oil Company was a "pilot operation." It was more than self-supporting, but was still an adjunct to a successful civil engineering consulting firm. Pierce Engineers still provides masonry facade design and reconstruction, as well as environmental engineering services to East Coast, New York City clients.

Our objective at Green Oil was to test the market for biodegradable, canola oil based lubricants. They are made from rape seeds that are pressed and chemically extracted for their oil, mixed with additives and packaged for distribution.

We "toll blended" high-quality, canola-based, rapidly biodegradable lubricants ("bio-lubricants") in limited quantities at a batch processing plant in Cleveland. As a result, the product was costly and not readily available in large quantities everywhere.

We supplied hydraulic fluid, chain saw oils, industrial machine oils and greases, concrete form oil and bicycle oils to diverse users, which include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Postal Service, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Niagara Mohawk Electric Company, The New England Power Authority, Kimberly-Clark, Asplundh, and the City of New York, Parks & Recreation.

To this day, this lubricants market has not yet matured to a point where the private financial community is willing, readily, to invest in large-scale infrastructure. This is necessary so that these bio-products can be manufactured in sizeable quantities. Only in that way can we make them widely available at prices that are competitive with their petroleum counterparts.

Passage of the 2002 U.S. Farm Bill, Section 9002 requires federal agencies to purchase designated bio-based items--with few exceptions, subject only to their being performance capabilities and their being readily available and competitively priced.. The U.S. 2002 U.S. Farm Bill remains an expected catalyst for growing U.S. demand for bio-lubricants in the not too distant future.

Changing corporate attitudes (no less public agency attitudes) toward environmentally safe product procurements is costly, time consuming and difficult. Clearly, the promising demand for bio-products cannot be realized without answering questions about the decision mechanisms that stimulate major users of lubricants to switch to these products.

It is usual for Green Oil personnel to get telephone calls from users of petroleum products who have severe allergies to them. Clearly the argument that bio-products are good for the environment is but half the answer, as they are toxicologically safe, too.

At this time, Green Oil Company is working with the government on research that will provide a better understanding of critical attitudes, decision-making structures and internal organizational conditions that can influence choices between the status quo; i.e., petroleum products, and the procurement of these safer products.

This knowledge is critical to developing a successful strategy for equipping the bio-products industry with the ability to replace petroleum lubricants (and fuels, too) with safe products

Green Oil Company ("Green Oil") was founded in 1992. Currently, our customers usually chose to switch to Green Oil mostly in response to costly clean ups and other environmental problems resulting from the use of petroleum-based oils.

Our initial interest in bio-lubricants stemmed from our work as civil engineers, specifically from our participation in several Phase-one environmental studies that required us to calculate the costs involved in cleaning up petroleum spills.

Our interest in bio-lubricants was given a further push when we came to appreciate the toxicity of petroleum-based products.

After we began producing and testing bio-lubricants, we realized that these products had a third major benefit--they meet or exceed many performance standards for petroleum products.

Unfortunately, cost impeded the mass acceptance of our bio-lubricants, thereby restricting this to a pilot project.

We expect this will change drastically once Green Oil begins producing superior products at a high volume and at prices that are competitive with petroleum-based products.

On the drawing board is a plant that will manufacture in excess of 100 million gallons of oil that will be fed by a like number of acres of farmland that will be under the control of Green Oil Company.

This will be accomplished when we prove to the financial community that we can change the attitudes of users of petroleum products to switch to these rapidly biodegradable, petroleum free, safe products.

That effort is well underway with financial assistance from a generous grant from the federal government to make this happen.

BY IRA N. PIERCE, PE, FOUNDER, GREEN OIL COMPANY