Readily made from vegetable oil, biodiesel has become a popular fuel, with world wide production now

exceeding 10 million tons per year. Yet like all energy sour ces, biodiesel has its share of drawbacks. New research shows that it can accele rate corrosion of the carbon steel used to manufacture pipelines, storage tanks, and other components of the fuel infrastructure (Energy Fuels, 2010, 24, 2924). Co-author and microbiologist Joseph Suflita, of the University of Oklahoma, Norm an, says that steel weakened from biodiesel interactions could leak fuel and oth er hazardous materials to the environment. "What we do in the guise of being environmentally green might not really be that green after all," he says. Biodiesel, a mix of fatty acid methyl esters, doesn't start out corrosive. Inste ad, bacteria and other microbes hydrolyze it in reactions that ultimately genera te hydrogen sulfide and organic acids, Suflita's research shows. These compounds eat into steel and degrade it, he explains. Manufacturers already have to demon strate biodiesel's chemical compatibility with the fuel infrastructure. But the fuel's biological stability during transport and storage generally isn't conside red, he adds. To investigate its biological degradation, Suflita's research team exposed soy-b ased biodiesel to anaerobic microbes from five marine and freshwater locations i ncluding natural seawater from Key West, Fla., and a contaminated aquifer overly ing a natural gas field near Ft. Lupton, Colo. Because pipelines and other compo nents of the fuel infrastructure quickly become anaerobic when microbes deplete available oxygen, Suflita's team focused on how anaerobic species might degrade biodiesel. The researchers found that organisms from each environment degraded t he fuel in less than a month. "Biodiesel is at least seven to eight times more biodegradable than traditional petrodiesel," Suflita says. What's more, metabolite profiling using GC/MS revealed a complex suite of fatty acids. Derived from biodiesel's ester backbone, fatty acids are further metaboli zed along with sulfates in the environment to generate hydrogen sulfide, Suflita says. The scientists observed the corrosive effect of these reactions when they immersed carbon steel samples in the Key West seawater mixed with biodiesel. Th e samples emerged blackened and pitted. Suflita's research raises difficult issues, says microbiologist Gill Geesey, of Montana State University, Boseman. Some diesel fuels today contain up to 20% bio diesel, added in part to decrease fuel's friction, Suflita says. Corrosion is al ready a widespread problem and the amount of biodiesel in the fuel infrastructur e is growing. "I suspect we will see an increase in biocorrosion in the material s used in biodiesel production and processing," Geesey says. Geesey proposes that plastic pipes and non-reactive polymer linings might minimi ze microbial degradation. But Suflita speculates that polymers may find only nic he applications. Broader use, he says, would mean replacing "hundreds of thousan ds of miles of pipeline, storage tanks, ballast tanks, oil-water separators and more." Instead, Suflita proposes that researchers should strive to chemically alter fue ls to resist biodegradation. "Of course," he adds, "we don't want to go overboar d and create a different environmental problem, i.e. biofuels that cause problem s when released to the environment. As a society we need to strike a balance and I think that we can."