In 2005 the bus company BBA has started a trial project with two local buses running on Pure Plant Oil (PPO). The buses are fitted with two fuel tanks (PPO and diesel). The buses are used on all BBA routes in the Eindhoven region. BBA has installed a special fuel tank for this project at the bus depot in Reusel.
BBA is a Dutch bus transport company operating about 600 buses for public transport purposes in urban, mixed as well as in rural environments. The propulsion and fuel used in the BBA fleet - beside the two PPO buses - is conventional.
Two buses are fitted with two fuel tanks: one for PPO and a new (smaller) one for diesel. This is necessary because the viscosity of PPO is less then diesel and therefore it is not yet possible to start a cold engine using PPO. The engine starts on diesel oil. Then the heat exchanger is warming up the PPO to about 65 ş Celsius, which takes approximately 10-15 minutes. The driver gets a signal when to switch from diesel to PPO (when the temperature is high enough) and when to switch back from PPO to diesel (at the end of the day or when the PPO is almost finished).
BBA has installed a special fuel tank for this project at the bus depot in Reusel. The company 'De Oliemolen' in Delfzijl supplies the PPO: this has recently become the first Dutch company to produce rapeseed oil for the Netherlands market. Two other companies (Solaroilsystems B.V. and EMA Autobedrijven B.V.) were also involved in setting up this project.
The buses use around 150-200 litres per day. In the Netherlands there is a tax exemption on PPO for a limited number of projects BBA is one of these projects. Therefore the price of the PPO for BBA at the moment is about € 0,75 per litre (price of PPO at the first public PPO filling point is €1,00 price of conventional diesel is about € 1,05 per litre). The costs for converting the conventional diesel buses to PPO were about €6.000,- per bus. Oil and filter change intervals (every 20.000 kilometres) are shorter then conventional diesel (every 60.000 kilometres). An overall evaluation will be made next year. The results of the trial will (partly) determine whether or not the project is continued or expanded.
An interesting spin-off is that the local authority in Reusel de Mierden has leased 8-12 hectare of land to the company CSV to be used to grow rapeseed crops every year and to produce PPO from it. This PPO is not used by BBA or the Oliemolen, but the pilot contributed to this decision of the municipality.
In addition to the fact that BBA wishes to contribute to the use of sustainable energy: average figures from the company Solar Oil indicated an average reduction compared to diesel of CO2 (72%), soot (50%) and sulphur (almost 100%).
The pilot was also started to discover what effect the long-term use of PPO has on the lifespan of the bus engines. Some data is already available on using PPO in engines for long journeys (indicating 'no significant change'), but not for local buses, which have to make a lot of stops.
BBA a Dutch bus transport company was founded in 1934. BBA is part of Veolia Transport Nederland. The BBA fleet consists of about 600 buses operating in urban, mixed as well as in rural environments.
More info is to be found on: www.bba.nl
Author: Jacqueline de Jong
www.sugre.info
