Two years ago, Underwriters Laboratory (UL) rescinded certification on E85 dispensing products. According to Ethanol Producer Magazine, Gilbarco Veeder-Root and Dresser Wayne have each submitted pumps (Dresser Wayne dispenser shown left) for E85 UL certification and it is expected that there will be certification in 2009.
According to Scott Negley, Dresser Wayne’s director of product management for North America and secretary on the board of the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, the equipment his company manufactures has already passed UL’s required testing procedures for E85. All equipment on the dispenser must be certified, however, and that is what the industry is now waiting for. “Until you get a full set of components certified, we are not allowed to put a label—a certification mark—on our dispenser because the system lacks certification,” Negley says. He says that dispensing hoses will most likely be the last piece of equipment to be certified.
Gilbarco’s Richard Browne, vice president of North American marketing, said, “Our flexible-fuel unit has special material coating and elastomers that will stand up to the aggressive/corrosive nature of high alcohol fuels,” Browne says. “Every component in the dispenser that comes in contact with the fuel has been upgraded.” Gilbarco’s dispenser expects UL approval by the end of this year.
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“We absolutely have to get off this addiction to oil and fossil fuels,” he said. “It’s killing us.”
Pennsylvania’s 2 percent biodiesel mandate, passed earlier this year, is on hold, despite the fact that the state is meeting a 40-million-gallon-a-year biodiesel production threshold. 
Texas-based Allard Research and Development is now selling the “world’s first mini-refinery” for consumer use that produces both ethanol and biodiesel.
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“The focus of the site is to allow producers and stakeholders to openly share ideas and experiences gleaned from raising and marketing switchgrass and other biomass energy crops,” says site host and switchgrass farmer Andy Bater.
The company has announced that “in the face of long-term changes driving greater global demand for food and biofuel sources” they are investing in sugarcane “to diversify its existing core crop portfolio and to leverage its experience in bringing innovations to the agricultural marketplace through breeding and biotechnology.”