Portland’s big on biodiesel

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, December 3, 2006

PORTLAND, Ore. – At any other construction site, Dane Brewer would caution his workers against sticking their noses into a forklift’s exhaust pipe stack. The dusty black particulate belched from a running diesel engine are known to contribute to long-term health risks, cardiovascular problems and cancer.

But Brewer, a field safety coordinator with Andersen Construction, had no problem walking up and taking a big whiff of the exhaust from a forklift on the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center job site.

“Smell that?” said Brewer, waving his hand over the exhaust like a chef culling the scent of a boiling pot of soup. “It’s belting out perfectly breathable air.”

Instead of the usual sooty diesel exhaust, the machine emitted a blast of clear, warm air that smelled faintly of burned french fries – the smell of an engine burning biodiesel.

Andersen began construction on the Portland hospital’s $42 million expansion about a year and a half ago and soon after began receiving odor complaints about equipment diesel exhaust from hospital patients and staff.

The general contractor decided to experiment with ways to eliminate all diesel exhaust from the job site, drawing from its experience working on other health care and high-tech projects on which it had to be sensitive to air quality.

Andersen workers first tried pumping the exhaust through a jury-rigged metal conduit to a spot farther from the building. The air was then fed through a negative air unit to filter the particulates.

But the odor stayed.

So in March, Andersen rented a new forklift – one with a manufacturer’s guarantee for biodiesel – and made the switch to the vegetable-based oil made mostly from used cooking grease.

“Rather than getting sick having to smell the diesel exhaust,” Brewer said, “we’d rather make them hungry smelling the french fries.”

Construction is one of the most polluting industries in the state in terms of air quality, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

“In our assessment of the emission inventory in the Portland area and statewide, of all the categories, construction equipment is one of the largest if not the largest sources of diesel emissions from diesel engines,” said Kevin Downing, clean diesel program coordinator with DEQ.

In recognition, many contractors have begun to use biodiesel and ultra-low-sulfur diesel in their heavy equipment to offset the effect of diesel exhaust on the health of workers and others who may be close by their construction sites.

Portland’s Walsh Construction Co., for example, stores B20, a blend of 20 percent biodiesel with traditional petroleum diesel, at its equipment yard for use in delivery trucks. Walsh began using the alternative fuel last year, said Sloan Bradley, a Walsh equipment manager, as part of a broader commitment to environmentally friendly and sustainable practices.