 |
|
Easy being green?
Golf course maintenance professionals who are ahead
of the biofuel curve can be found across the country.
|
Editor’s Note: Last month’s issue of GCM focused on renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power, while the March issue explored the development of alternative fuels in the golf course equipment industry. Scattered case studies in the field persist, many of them revealing that these renewable energy resources are not so complicated, nor so problematic, and are becoming more of a mainstream issue than at first glance. A few of those mini-stories follow here — three golf course management professionals and a well-known industry vendor, all of whom have been willing to do a little something for a lot of good.
A grand education
To call Ron Dahlin a pioneering superintendent in the use of biodiesel might be a bit of a stretch, but his experiences with the resource are nevertheless noteworthy.
Dahlin, CGCS at the Meadows Golf Club at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., has been running a blend of 80 percent regular diesel and 20 percent biodiesel in his maintenance equipment going on four years now, which puts him ahead of the current curve in the use of biofuels on golf courses.
The first lesson to be reaffirmed from the 15-year GCSAA member is that bold moves on the golf course are born of supportive employers. So it is with the use of biofuels at the Meadows, an 18-hole public venue that hosts more than 30,000 rounds a year.
“The university has been behind this all the way; they really want you to lean to the green,” says Dahlin, who has been at the highly rated collegiate championship layout for seven years. “I knew that I could take a chance (with biofuels) and be backed up by my employer. I didn’t have to worry about a whole lot of losses. I know that they were behind me to try this.”
When Dahlin began fueling his diesel-powered equipment with biodiesel, most of the machinery used represented most of the major brands — Jacobsen, John Deere, Ransomes and Kubota. None of the equipment was converted in any way for the B20 blend. There were some transition hurdles — issues with clogged fuel filters and fuel lines because, ironically, the biofuel includes a detergent that actually cleaned the storage tanks and fuel lines of residue from the regular diesel. After that initial cleansing, it’s been clear sailing, and filter changes are now part of the machines’ regular maintenance schedule.
Last month Dahlin took possession of a new batch of John Deere equipment, all “biodiesel-ready from the word go,” as he says. More clear sailing.
To this point, Dahlin can consider himself a myth-buster if not a pioneer.
“You have to watch out for what you hear. I did some homework beforehand four years ago ... things that might happen, things to get ready for. But I really haven’t had any of those issues,” he says, noting that at 500 feet above sea level he’s had no power or performance problems, no warranty issues with manufacturers, no cold-weather gelling (some of the equipment is used in snow removal every winter) and no problems with poorly refined or blended fuel.
|
“There’s kind of a groundswell on biodiesel here in Michigan now, so I haven’t had any trouble finding a reputable supplier of an 80/20 blend,” Dahlin says, adding that his fuel costs increased at first about 20 cents a gallon until a federal tax incentive went into effect and was passed on from the supplier to the course. “Now it’s a wash,” Dahlin adds.
|
Advice and consent
Gary Carls, CGCS, golf operations supervisor for the city of Sunnyvale, Calif., has taken the lessons of Ron Dahlin to heart.
Earlier this year, Carls was asked by Sunnyvale’s equipment maintenance provider, Fleet Services, to take part in a six-month pilot program using biodiesel in the equipment at the city’s 18-hole course. Using the message boards on the GCSAA Web site, Carls sought some input, comments and suggestions about the process. One of his respondents was Dahlin.
|
“He was very helpful, very encouraging,” says Carls, a 25-year GCSAA member. “I’m looking forward to trying it out and seeing what happens.”
In March, Sunnyvale began the pilot program, which also includes some of Fleet Services’ pickup trucks. With none of the equipment converted, a B5 blend is to be used for a couple of months, and if all goes well, Carls says they’ll move up to B20. Fleet Services, he adds, supplies any extra filters needed.
|
The biodiesel used at Sunnyvale is premixed and delivered by the city’s regular diesel supplier. It’s stored in one of the golf course’s underground tanks.
An impetus for the program, according to Fleet Services, is that three other cities in the region — San Francisco, San Jose and Pacifica — are using biodiesel in some of their equipment and vehicles.
Fry cook deluxe
Christopher Gray is nothing if not bold. He won the 2003 national overall and public Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards while at Lost Marsh Golf Course in Hammond, Ind., yet had quit the profession before the honor was even announced. But, after a couple of years with a leading advertising and marketing company, EPIC of Wisconsin, Gray is back in the business and as bold as ever.
Now the Class A superintendent at the Marvel Golf Club at Kentucky Lake in Benton, Ky., the eight-year GCSAA member is into biofuels — no surprise there — and doing it unconventionally his way — no surprise there, either.
In the past year, during which he won an ELGA chapter award at Marvel, Gray has been running a few mowers on a homemade hybrid mix of diesel and recycled fryer oil from a local restaurant, a “fuel extending program,” he calls it. He and his staff made the necessary mechanical adjustments — simply rigging up a separate fuel storage tank and fuel line for the biofuel on each machine, with a Y valve to switch back and forth — and learned, with a bit of trial and error, how to “refine” the restaurant’s used cooking oil.
“Technically, the use of vegetable or cooking oils is not biodiesel, which is made by treating or modifying those oils,” Gray says. “We’re using unmodified vegetable oil, which is a more sustainable fuel choice in the big picture.”
Intentionally or otherwise, Gray outfitted a selection of diesel-powered mowers that represent the major equipment-makers — a Jacobsen Tri-King, a Toro Groundmaster front-deck rotary and a John Deere 1435D front-deck rotary. Each has a tank of regular diesel and a tank of the cooking oil that has been meticulously filtered with an 80-mesh, 175-micron screen hooked up to a filter pump. The oil is then heated to thin it. Gray says the cleaner and thinner the oil, the better it flows through the mowers’ fuel lines without additional heating.
The operational procedures are basic, but you have to do it correctly. You start the engine with regular diesel. Once the engine is warm enough, switch the diesel off and turn on the oil fuel. The engine’s heat allows the oil to perform well even in cold weather. Once the mowing is done, the engine is cooled down on diesel before it’s shut off, which allows the diesel to clean out any oil residues.
To date, for all intents and purposes, the project has been a success. Gray says the cost of the biofuel is 38 to 43 cents a gallon, which includes filters and the time spent processing the raw oil. In all, he notes that the reduction in diesel consumption is 58 percent. A minor drawback is in performance efficiency — the biofuel runs about 70 percent of regular diesel.
“It tends to pay for itself pretty quick if you figure out the right ratios,” Gray says. “At this point, we haven’t seen any ill effects on anything, which is really good considering regular diesel here is around $2 to $2.25 a gallon, which is a big issue for a public golf course.”
Easy rider
Jim Culley drives more than 1,000 miles a week as a regional sales manager for Stover Seed Co. in Los Angeles, staying in touch with a long list of customers that includes a lot of golf courses.
Besides the wear and tear on his ¾-ton Dodge turbo-diesel pickup, 1,000 miles a week adds up to a hefty fuel bill with diesel hovering around $3 a gallon in California. So, last summer Culley followed the lead of the company’s regional product manager, John Knutson, whose family owns Stover Seed. Knutson had his diesel-powered Mercedes Benz retrofitted to run on a hybrid mix of diesel and recycled vegetable oil to, as Chris Gray would say, “extend” the car’s fuel during occasional sorties to account clients in a three-state area.
Culley, in turn, had his Dodge similarly outfitted, starting with an 85-gallon tank for the oil to complement the truck’s 20-gallon diesel tank. Then he rigged a separate fuel line for the oil plus a device to switch back and forth between the two fuels. Extra fuel and oil gauges were added to the dashboard appointments.
Culley found an ideal oil supplier, a tortilla factory near Stover’s L.A. warehouse that had virtually an ocean of once-used cooking oils to get rid of. He made a deal to buy the oil in 55-gallon barrels for $1 a gallon. The raw oil is filtered at the warehouse through a gravity system, which includes a 1-micron screen at the end of the process.
The truck runs fine. The proper procedures include the prerequisite warm-up each day on diesel power (until the engine temperature is 140 degrees and the oil temp is at 100 degrees) before hitting the freeway under recycled oil power. On the return trip, Culley switches to diesel a few miles from home to burn out the oil residue.
“I forget to do that last step sometimes, but I’ve installed an alarm that lets me know,” says Culley, who has been a member of GCSAA for 10 years. “The performance has been very good overall. The only issue is less power on steep inclines. Depending on how I’m doing on time, I sometimes switch back to diesel on big hills.”
Culley says the diesel tank will empty well ahead of the oil storage. In fact, depending on driving conditions and such, he may go through another quarter- to a half-tank of diesel before refilling the oil tank, which is usually more than 1,500 miles. He also changes the recycled oil filter at every refueling. All the vehicle’s oil filters and fuel filters are changed during regular maintenance every 3,000 to 5,000 miles.
Besides his costs for the two fuels, Culley also pays a state highway fuel tax. Then there’s the $5,000 in conversion costs on the pickup, which stands to be a short-lived debit.
“I figure overall I’m saving about $2 a gallon in fuel costs, which means it’ll pay for itself within the first year,” he says.
In the meantime, Stover has converted one of its big delivery trucks to the hybrid mix and plans to change out two others soon.
New era in gear
Stories like these are scattered throughout the golf course industry, and more crop up all the time. As Ron Dahlin says, renewable energy has become one more thing that comes with the territory.
“It’s not a hard thing to do,” he says. “To me it’s just part of the overall package. We’re pretty good stewards of the earth, and it’s just another step.”
RECENT issues
 |
 |
April |
March |