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Glacier Park vehicles run with mixed fuel

Just nine months ago, Glacier National Park was powered by pure petrol, but after a rapid immersion in the National Park Service’s "Green Energy" program, the park’s entire vehicle fleet is now partly powered by soybeans.

By Jim Mann
The Daily Inter Lake

"It’s amazing because it makes sense, and it’s the right thing to do," said Glacier Facility Manager Lou Summerfield, who led the park’s effort to run on bio-fuels.

Summerfield cites a few figures as the reasons it makes sense. A mixture of 20 percent soybean ethanol, and 80 percent diesel yields emission reductions of 10 percent in particulate, 21 percent in hydrocarbons, and 11 percent in carbon dioxide.

"It reduces the park’s dependency on (mostly) foreign oil by 20 percent," said Summerfield, who comes from a ranching background and is proud that bio-fuels are mostly derived from farm products.

"I saw the coolest bumper sticker: ’20 percent of my fuel is grown by American farmers,’" Summerfield said with a smile.

The park was authorized to pursue the effort last fall through a partnership with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Department of Energy. The park received $25,000 for a three-year period to offset the potentially higher cost of bio-fuels compared to petroleum fuels.

The entire effort, Summerfield said, was in response to the national "Green Energy" parks program, which was a response to a congressional mandate calling on federal agencies to reduce traditional energy uses.

In October, Summerfield procured a tankload of bio-fuel from Yellowstone National Park, which was "splash mixed" with the diesel supply at Glacier’s headquarters at West Glacier. The park’s heavy equipment operated on it all winter, and just two weeks ago, the park started running a 10 percent ethanol mix in all of its gasoline-powered vehicles.

"The entire park is now using it," Summerfield said, referring to Glacier’s summer fleet of 238 vehicles, including 60 diesel rigs.

What made that possible was the recruitment of a local supplier — City Service of Kalispell is providing the park’s bio-fuels, rather than Summerfield trying to scrape up batches of "B-20" diesel from various sources across the Northwest.

Summerfield contends that bio-fuels will become increasingly more common over the next five years. In addition to soybeans, bio-fuels derived from canola, grains, and even recycled cooking grease are expected to become more widely available.

As that happens, Summerfield predicts prices will drop. Since City Service started supplying park pumps at West Glacier, St. Mary and Polebridge, Summerfield said, costs have dropped about 60 cents a gallon. But they are still slightly higher than straight petroleum fuels, he said.

"I’ve heard one million reasons why bio-fuels can’t work," Summerfield said, starting with two formerly common but fallible reasons: engines won’t work in the cold or they won’t work at all on ethanol.

Bio-fuels have been put to the test in the Department of Defense, and other agencies. In the National Park Service, it was Yellowstone and the Channel Islands National Park off the California coast that took the lead.

But never has a park converted to bio-fuels as quickly as Glacier.

"At Yellowstone, it was tough for them to get this through. But at Glacier, it was simple. We converted the entire fleet just like that," Summerfield said with a finger snap. "Just by making the decision to do the right thing."

When Yellowstone staffers started pursuing bio-fuels two years ago, Summerfield said, they had to wrestle with the logistics of arranging for reliable bio-fuel supplies. They had to overcome naysayers, and essentially they had to wait and see how their vehicles responded to prolonged use of bio-fuels.

Everything worked out great, Summerfield said, citing the example of one diesel truck in Yellowstone that has traveled 300,000 miles on 100 percent bio-diesel made from canola oil.

Summerfield said that same truck was put to an unusual test — it was parked inside the Grizzly Discovery Center in West Yellowstone to determine if its organic fuel would attract the bears.

It did not.

Vehicles manufactured since 1983 can run on lighter mixes of bio-fuels without replacing parts such as rubber hoses and gaskets, Summerfield said. More recent vehicles can run on much higher concentrations of bio-diesel or ethanol. Glacier has 10 vehicles that will run on 85 percent bio-fuels.

When Summerfield made the move toward bio-fuels last year, most of the research and practical testing had been resolved at the other parks.

"I’m ecstatic about it," said Summerfield, who has recently given alternative fuels presentations across the region. "Other people had to go through all the pain."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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