History of Biodiesel

The history of biofuel is more political and economical than technological. In 1898, when Rudolph Diesel first demonstrated his compression ignition engine at the World's Exhibition in Paris, he used peanut oil - the original biodiesel. Diesel believed biomass fuel to be a viable alternative to the resource consuming steam engine. Henry Ford designed his automobiles, beginning with the 1908 Model T, to use ethanol. Ford was so convinced that renewable resources were the key to the success of his automobiles that he built a plant to make ethanol in the Midwest and formed a partnership with Standard Oil to sell it in their distributing stations. One player in the biofuel industry was hemp. Hemp provided the biomass that Ford needed for his production of ethanol. He found that 30% hemp seed oil is usable as a high-grade diesel fuel and that it could also be used as a machine lubricant and an engine oil.

Despite the fact that men such as Henry Ford, Rudolph Diesel, and subsequent manufacturers of diesel engines saw the future of renewable resource fuels, a political and economic struggle doomed the industry. Vegetable oils were only used until the 1920s when an alteration was made to the engine enabling it to use a residue of petroleum diesel. Although the diesel engine gained worldwide acceptance, biodiesel did not. With superior price, availability, and government subsidies, petroleum diesel quickly became the fuel of choice for the diesel engine.

In the 1930s, William Randolph Hurst, Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon, the Rockefellers and other "oil barons", who were developing vast empires from petroleum, all had vested interest in seeing the renewable resources industry derailed, the hemp industry eliminated, and biomass fuels derided.

At the beginning of World War II, the groundwork for our current perceptions of biofuels was in place. In addition to the diesel engine being modified and the petroleum industry establishing a market with very low prices for a residual product, a major biomass industry was being shut down. Despite its use during World War II, biofuels remained in the obscurity to which they had been forced. Post war brought new cars and increased petroleum use. The petroleum industries pushed the government to build roads, highways and freeways so the automobiles they produced had a place to operate.

By the 1970's, we were dependent on foreign oil. Our supply of crude oil, as are all supplies of fossil fuels, was limited. In the mid 1970s, fuel shortages revived interest in developing biodiesel as an alternative to petroleum diesel. However, as the petroleum market was increasingly subsidized, biodiesel was again relegated to a minority "alternative" status. Today, despite extensive use by commercial fleet operators, biodiesel consumption accounts for less than one percent of the total diesel fuel consumption in the United States.