"We've had dozens of hospitals call us," he continued.
"We've had the city of Santa Monica call us. We've had
museums call us."
Word of the fuel's success is spreading fast, which is great
for Supreme Oil, the Phoenix-based company for which Sellars
works. It's also good publicity for the hospital, the
Massachusetts fuel supplier and a Florida company that invented
a special additive that makes the biodiesel burn more cleanly.
More testing needs to be done to settle some doubts, but the
people at St. Mary say they're hard-pressed to find anything
wrong with their new biodiesel. No other hospital in the nation
uses anything like it.
"This is just an incredible finding for us," said
the hospital's facilities director, Mike Mathis. "We just
kind of stumbled upon this."
Biodiesel isn't for everyone, at least not yet. It is
particularly suited for hospitals only because their huge boiler
systems typically run on either gas or liquid fuel, and because
their backup power generators can hold large amounts of liquid
fuel.
Another reason biodiesel looks good these days is the high
price of natural gas. Even Sellars admits that biodiesel didn't
make economic sense a year ago, before natural gas prices
skyrocketed in California.
Though big in Europe, use of biodiesel in the United States
has been limited mainly to vehicle fleets, where it is often
mixed with regular diesel.
The biodiesel industry hopes Sellars' work will open up a
whole new market.
"This is a first step in expanding the use of the
fuel," said Jenna Higgins, spokeswoman for the National
Biodiesel Board, a Jefferson City, Mo., nonprofit trade
association. While several additives are being tested for their
ability to reduce smog-causing emissions, she said, "this
is the first one we know of that's very successful and that's
being used immediately."
World Energy, the Boston company that manufactures the
biodiesel Sellar sells, is performing its own tests on Sellars'
formula. The goal is to find broader uses for the nontoxic fuel.
But World Energy's western region director, Graham Noyes,
said the company doesn't want to get ahead of itself.
"I think we need some more testing to confirm that we
can do better than natural gas," Noyes said. A key question
to answer, he said, is how effective the additive is at reducing
biodiesel's nitrogen oxide emissions, which contribute to smog.
The Los Angeles-based Coalition for Clean Air agrees that the
biodiesel industry must provide a clear indication of how much
nitrogen oxide Sellars' mixture produces. And until that
happens, coalition policy director Todd Campbell said he remains
skeptical of biodiesel as a viable fuel alternative.
"Just meeting the (air quality) requirements doesn't
mean it's clean," Campbell said, pointing out that
emissions-reducing additives usually come with their own
drawbacks.
"I think it's premature to say biodiesel's our answer
and go forward until we know much more about this field,"
he said.
Sellars insists that the key lies in mixing the biodiesel
with RxP, the special additive for which Supreme Oil has an
exclusive nationwide distribution contract in biodiesel
applications.
"(RxP) does unbelievable things to diesel fuel," he
siad. "It makes it so much cleaner."
RxP Products, the St. Petersburg, Fla., company that
manufactures the additive using a complex process it calls
"radiant containment," has been selling the solution
for 11 years. Its customers mostly use it in locomotive and ship
engines. Company President Don Woodward said he's pleased, if
not a bit surprised, to hear of a new market for the additive.
"We're just glad to be part of the party," Woodward
said. "We're glad that we can help out."
Sellars shares their sense of having played a small role in
what could be a hopeful alternative energy solution.
"I just put two and two together," he said,
"and came up with kind of a unique use for biodiesel."
