By Stephanie Hoff
Known for Lake Michigan beaches and urban parks, the Chicago Park District is using ever-higher biodiesel blends to reduce emissions and improve air quality.
Lawn mowers, beach rakers, truckers, and tree trimmers are operating on blends up to B100 (100 percent biodiesel). The Chicago Park District has achieved up to an 86 percent reduction in carbon emissions.
The department estimates it has saved people about $67,000 in health care costs by improving the air quality with biodiesel. Michael Dimitroff, manager of Art Initiatives, wants to see the City of Chicago utilize more biodiesel across its fleets.
“Biodiesel is available now. It performs better than standard diesel, and the power is the same as diesel fuel,” he says. “It also benefits the health of our employees and park visitors. There really is no detriment to run on biodiesel.”
Dimitroff says the equipment he uses that runs on biodiesel is safe and dependable.
“We have heavy class A trucks, four refuse trucks, and three cabover forestry trucks, and so these are trucks that idle a lot. They need power,” Dimitroff says of the equipment that runs on biodiesel. “You’re putting a man or woman in a bucket to cut trees. It’s using power to run hydraulics. You want to have the combustability and dependability.”
He notes the technology has come far enough along that biodiesel works well in cold temperatures.
“The B100 system is really how to heat the fuel to the optimum level. The conversation kit takes the heat from the engine, passes it through with a pump, and then there’s a probe that heats the tank ahead of time,” he explains. “It’s all just warming the fuel to optimum temperatures. It was 22 below the first time we started it up, and it ran all day.”
Leave a Reply