A U.S. Navy Carrier Group Is Sailing on Beef Fat
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a20721/us-navy-carrier-group-beef-fat/By Kyle Mizokami
May 4, 2016
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The United States Navy is powering an entire carrier battle group on a blended biofuel mixture. The so-called "Great Green Fleet" is meant to promote the use of alternatives to fossil fuels—in this case, beef fat. The initiative is named after the Great White Fleet, a flotilla of 16 white-painted battleships President Theodore Roosevelt sent on a round the world trip in 1907, putting the world on notice that American naval power had arrived.
American and allied ships typically run on F-76 naval fuel. But for this operation, the Stennis Carrier Strike Group, consisting of the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis, cruiser Mobile Bay, destroyers Chung Hoon, Stockdale, and William P. Lawrence, and the fast combat support ship Rainier are all running on a blended fuel consisting of 10 percent beef fat and 90 percent petroleum.
The beef fat comes from cattle ranchers in the Midwest, in the form of tallow. Ranchers are paid fourteen cents per gallon for the waste. With a 77-million-gallon contract, that amounts to just short of $11 million.
In 2012, the Navy used biofuel for the multinational Rim of the Pacific 2012 naval exercises. At the time, the Navy paid $26 per gallon—and was heavily criticized for using an expensive fuel mixture in a time of fiscal austerity. For the Great Green Fleet, the Navy is paying 13 times less than that—$2.19 per gallon. Much of that is attributable to falling oil prices, but Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus—the father of the Great Green Fleet initiative—claims that Navy support of the biofuel industry has also helped lower the overall price.
Cruiser USS Mobile Bay takes on a biofuel mixture from USNS Rainier.
The Navy originally wanted the jets and helicopters of the Stennis' carrier air wing to run on biofuels, too, but according to Navy Times it was unable to secure a contract for a "drop-in" biofuel replacement for JP-5 jet fuel. As a result, the airplanes on the Great Green Fleet cruise still run on conventional jet fuel.
The goal had been to run the Great Green Fleet on a 50-50 biofuel blend—a doable prospect, as the ships involved in RIMPAC 2012 ran on a blend of 50 algae oil/waste oil and 50 percent petroleum. But the price per gallon is still above a congressional mandate to use blended fuels competitive with regular fuel prices.
The Stennis Carrier Strike Group is currently on patrol in the Western Pacific, where it was recently denied entry by the Chinese government to the port of Hong Kong.
