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From: Andrew G. Anderson (no email)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 12:38:58 EST
Friends: I thought you might be interested in the following. (long)
Andy Anderson
Andrew & Pamela Anderson
Pearson 365 Ketch
"Ospreys Nest"
Little River, SC
Vegetable Oil Provides Cleaner Fuel Alternative for Environment
Bio-diesel has been used extensively in Europe for over 20 years, but in
the
United States it's still a rare commodity at the pump.
So Peter Arnold, an environmental educator in Wiscasset, Maine, makes
his
own. Three days a week, he drives his sky blue pick-up truck to the Sea
Basket restaurant along Route One. He uses a hydraulic hoist to unload
two
empty barrels and pick up two 200-liter drums filled with used frying
oil.
The restaurant owner leaves them for him behind the kitchen.
"If we were picking up a lot more oil we'd have to figure out a
different way
to do it. But at this scale it's just the right way to do it," Mr.
Arnold
said.
Mr. Arnold takes the oil back to the Chewonki Institute, where he uses
it to
heat the facility's buildings and power its tractors. It's also an
instructional aid for his high school environmental science and
conservation
classes.
In a corrugated steel shed, he's rigged up a small bio-fuel
demonstration for
today's lesson.
Twelve students follow him in and gaze at the contraption. It consists
of
several elements a small pump is attached to a tank on the floor, which
has a
rubber hose running out its side upward to another tank sitting on a
raised
platform.
"So it isn't very elegant but it changes vegetable oil into a bio-fuel
and it
starts with this thing, which is a sump pump," Mr. Arnold said.
The sump pump propels the used cooking oil upward to the reaction tank,
where
it's mixed with methanol and lye. To start the chemical reaction, Mr.
Arnold
heats the mixture to 49 degrees Celsius, stirs it, and lets it sit for
eight
hours. As it cools, syrupy glycerin settles to the bottom and is
siphoned
off. What's left behind is distilled bio-diesel fuel, ready to be used
in any
vehicle that runs on petroleum diesel including Mr. Arnold's Volvo
station
wagon.
As he turns the ignition key, the wide-eyed teenagers gather around the
car,
watching the exhaust turn from grayish puffs into an almost transparent
mist
curling out of the tail pipe.
"There's no sulfur in vegetable oil, so there's no sulfur dioxide
formed.
Sulfur dioxide is the pre-cursor of acid rain. So we've cleaned up now,
we've
got nice clean exhaust, it smells like French fries. That's cool. And we
made
it ourselves. That's even cooler," he said.
But after the cheering stops, the students have an important question.
"What if we want to use bio-diesel in our cars at home? What if random
civilians want to use bio-diesel? Is it available to people or do you
have to
move to Europe or Chewonki to use it?" a student asks.
Arnold: "No, you don't. I would urge you to talk to your local fuel
supplier
and say I'd really like you to carry bio-diesel."
Although there are some bio-diesel stations around the country, so far
in
Maine, there's only one commercial source, and it's not widely
advertised.
But John Wathen, who works for Maine's Department of Environmental
Protection, knows where to find it, and he's willing to pay a little
more to
keep his engine and his conscience - running cleaner. He mixes the
soybean
oil derivative with regular diesel fuel.
"At 40 percent, which is a nice blend for much of the year, it costs me
about
an extra penny a mile to drive, and at twenty per cent (bio-diesel to
80%
diesel), it's really only 10 or 15 cents more a gallon than pure diesel,
so
it's really not a big consideration," Mr. Wathen said.
Once a week, Mr. Wathen makes the hour-long trip to the Solar Market in
Arundel, Maine, where he fills his 20 liter jugs from a 40,000 liter
storage
cylinder.
Solar Market owner Noato Inoye said he doesn't make much profit right
now,
but he's convinced bio-diesel will slowly win converts. He hopes it will
also
spur local farmers to grow soybeans or rapeseed, and turn the oil into
cash.
Right now, he buys the soybean-based fuel from a wholesaler in Boston,
Massachusetts a two-hour drive to the south.
"The bio-diesel production is gonna be a regional enterprise. It really
doesn't make any sense to begin to transport bio-diesel that was created
in
Texas to sell it in Maine. We need to have our own bio-diesel refinery,
and
it could be a full-fledged industry all over the country," Mr. Inoye
said.
Bio-diesel has been slow to catch on in northern states, where cold
temperatures can solidify it if it's not blended with regular diesel.
But it
is being used in several mid-western and southern truck fleets and
transit
systems and on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Whether it finds a larger
market
depends in part on the U.S. government. The new farm bill includes more
than
$200 million to educate fuel buyers about the benefits of bio-diesel, as
well
as to expand the production of the fuel.
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