Burner Manufacturer Announces B20 Certification

National Biodiesel Board welcomes equipment companies’ embrace of higher blends

On September 22, 2020, at the Virtual HEAT Show, heating equipment manufacturer R.W. Beckett announced that all of the company’s AF and AFG model burners produced after September 8, 2020 are now certified to use biodiesel blends of up to 20 percent (B20). This aligns Beckett burners with the first step of the Providence Resolution as well as the heating oil industry’s newly announced plan to implement blends of 20 percent biofuel by 2023 (see "The Road to Net-Zero Continues").

According to the company website, Beckett tank accessories rated for use with B6-20 blends include SpeedFill^™ caps and connectors, tank gauges, fire safety valves, check valves, thermal switches, vent caps, time saving fills, fill alarms, duplex tank bushings, fill caps, combination fill alarms and tank gauges, fuel additives, double tapped bushings, tools, Rocket wireless gauges, filters, parts, pipe fittings and LineGuardian fuel line systems. 

“We are excited to offer dealers and their customers an important step in their carbon reduction efforts while retaining the great benefits of liquid fuels,” R.W. Beckett Director of Sales & Marketing Fred Hunt said in a company press release.

A separate press release issued by the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) welcomed the announcement from R.W. Beckett. “We are extremely happy to see equipment companies stepping up to the table to support higher biodiesel blends in home heating oil after the years of research conducted to make that move possible,” said NBB Technical Director Scott Fenwick. “Last year’s Providence Resolution has served as a catalyst and we are pleased to see all segments of the industry continuing to pull toward those extremely important carbon reduction goals.”

NBB added that the heating oil industry’s transition to B20 by 2023, B50 by 2030 and B100 by 2050 would reduce emissions from the home heating sector more easily and affordably than system conversions.

“Given the compounding impacts of the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over time, doing B20 today and moving to B50 and net zero carbon B100 in the future provides significantly more GHG reductions than waiting for future wind and solar — without the capital costs of heat pumps, solar panels, wind turbines and updating the electrical grid,” said Fenwick. “An all of the above strategy is important, but the nearly 5.5 million homes in the Northeast who currently use heating oil systems can make a significant impact with biodiesel, almost immediately.”

In 2008, NBB and the National Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA) initiated a cooperative effort to conduct lab scale, bench scale and field testing of biodiesel-heating oil blends up to B20. These initial efforts culminated with ASTM International’s adoption of the D396-15a specification for B6-B20 heating oil blends in March 2015. 

“NBB and NORA have since been focused on the data needed to secure industry consensus ASTM quality standards for blends up to B100, as well as updated third party certification procedures for B100,” said Steve Howell of M4 Consulting who chairs the ASTM Biodiesel Task Force at ASTM International. “These continuing R&D efforts were instrumental in providing a foundation for the Providence Resolution, which in turn helped provide the impetus to the equipment companies to invest in their own future by supporting higher biodiesel blends.”

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