Case Study

biodiesel relief for a tiny island

By Frankie Abralind

More in the Summer 2009 issue

The biggest biodiesel plant on the island of Vieques (pop. 10,000) is in Manuel Cruz's garage.
It's a beauty, too: a deluxe "appleseed," tidily plumbed along one wall of a two-bay garage, next to a hilltop villa that overlooks the town of Isabel Segunda and the ocean beyond. There are dozens of barrels and oil jugs lined up here, the signifiers of the only biodiesel game in a desperate town.
I visited Vieques, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico that is geographically part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on vacation.
I lucked out when Cruz, a biodieselSMARTER subscriber, offered to show me around and tell me his story.

Vieques was once the site of relentless U.S. military weapons testing. The island was marked as a strategically significant spot by the Navy at the start of World War II, to provide a safe harbor for the British Navy in case the UK were to fall to the Nazis. After the war and throughout the Cold War, the island remained largely occupied by the Navy. Nearly three quarters sectioned off as restricted areas, and the civilian population was relegated to a narrow section in the island's middle. Tens of thousands of live bombs were detonated every year on the island, polluting air and water and destroying sensitive areas.
Cruz grew up here in the 1970s and '80s. He remembers the daily explosions, so commonplace that it didn't seem strange to have the house rattle from thunder on a blue sky day.
But cancer rates had gone up. Most folks were reluctant to eat local fish. It was a paradox: a luscious tropical island, but residents didn't buy local produce because of fear of contaminated soil. Drinking water came over in a massive pipeline from the main island. With limited economic development, there wasn't much of a future, so Cruz left Vieques after high school.
Resourceful and handy, Cruz pursued a career as a mechanic, seeking opportunity on the island of St. Croix. There he built a successful repair shop for starters and alternators, which he operated for several years.
The military finally left in 2003 after a prolonged protest effort of public demonstrations and civil disobedience. Former military areas earned National Wildlife Refuge designation (much is still restricted because of contamination and the threat of unexploded ordnance).
Vieques, nevertheless, remained stunted. Today it retains the semblance of a rural outpost. Nowhere on this idyllic island are there the resort hotels you expect; you don't get served rum punch in coconuts on the beach and the road to the most beautiful beaches is literally so potholed you can only travel it by mountain bike or four wheel drive.
Worse, there is a chronic supply shortages of the most basic goods. Though Puerto Rico's main island is only a $2 ferry ride away, the ferry is the only way to get anything to the island, and the trip takes more than an hour. Need car parts? Send a pickup truck over on the ferry. Vegetables? A box truck on the ferry. Gasoline and diesel fuel? A tanker truck on the ferry.

Vulnerable fuel supply
Everyone on Vieques drives, and with fuel prices still reasonable at $0.54/liter (~$2.04/gallon), conservation efforts are sadly lacking. Though the whole island (including the off-limits portion) is only 20 miles long, there are gas-guzzling cars and SUV's everywhere. There are no buses, though the taxis, known as "publicos," are full-size vans. Because of the condition of the beach roads, the only two types of rental cars available anywhere are 10-mpg Jeep Wranglers and Suzuki Samurais.
As a result of these factors, the island's only two gas stations run out of fuel every single week.
This means everyone who drives is used to waiting in line. When word gets out that the stations are running low, the line goes way down the street. It's nothing strange to wait three hours to fill up with gasoline.
The fuel shortage could probably be solved simply by investing in some public transportation and including green driving tips in Driver's Ed classes (do you really need your engine idling while you wait in line for gas?). But still, there's the vulnerable supply.
One day in 2007, the single ferry that services the island broke down. Nothing got ferried between Vieques and the main island for a week and a half; even the tourists had to come and go by 8-seat airplanes from the island's tiny airport. The two busy gas stations on the island were bone dry. Business ground to a standstill.
This is where crisis became opportunity for biodiesel, and Manuel Cruz, to shine.
When the ferry broke down, Cruz was living on Vieques again. He had returned to start a restaurant after selling the alternator shop. "Shawnaa's," named after his daughter, found a niche selling good Puerto Rican fast food to locals.
Despite this fuel crisis, Cruz had to find a way to continue operating the restaurant and his ranch.
"I just happened to remember hearing something in the news about a guy who went from New York to California in his Volkswagen, running on straight vegetable oil," he said.
Cruz filtered some used oil from his restaurant a couple of times through a t-shirt, mixed it with the last diesel he had, and poured it in his tractor's fuel tank. "I thought, it's gonna work or my engine's gonna blow. I didn't really know much about it."
It worked.
"I could feel the tractor working with more power," said Cruz. "I could go up the slope here in a higher gear than on regular diesel.
"So I started to read about biodiesel on the internet. I read and read, until finally I got to build my own machine."
Cruz built his processor without a kit or class. "I just put, on the internet, 'biodiesel.' I never really sat down and talked to nobody, shared ideas. I am here by myself, my wife don't know anything about it. I love it."
He started, as many of us do, with a one liter batch in a jug. "It came out pretty good! And then I washed it real nice, drained it out, it looked good. It looked simple.
"But when I started doing a lot of gallons, then the problems started. I didn't know how to deal with the soap when it first came out of the processor. I threw away a lot of gallons of methanol. I had just about four barrels at the time, that was like $900.
"So I bought a brand new pump, a big water pump. I was thinking that was my problem, that my processor was too big, and the pump was too small.
"In the morning, when I'd wake up, first thing I was back at the computer with 'What am I doing wrong?' My daughter would laugh at me. I'd say 'This time, I got it!' But then, back to the computer." (And, of course, inspiring stories from old copies of biodieselSMARTER.)
Cruz persisted, determined to produce his own fuel. He reinstalled the old pump. He changed his recipe.
Finally, it paid off. "When I got the first good result, it was on my last barrel. Three complete barrels, wasted. I told my wife 'Listen, I know I've been spending a lot of money. This is my last barrel, so if it works, I'll keep going, if not, I'll give up.'"
The batch came out perfectly.
On his small hilltop ranch, Cruz continues to make biodiesel, striving for self-reliance. His water wash comes from a 20,000 gallon rainwater cistern built into his house. He longs to be off-grid, and is also installing a solar array on the roof of his garage.
To date, Cruz has produced more than a thousand gallons of fuel. He's got a diesel engine to put into his new Nissan pickup truck. He drives a biodiesel van to the main island every week to get produce and supplies for the restaurant.
And so, for this remote tropical island weary from petroleum's stranglehold, there is hope. Manuel Cruz is creating a refuge of biodiesel-powered independence.