With a translucent green color and an oily consis tency, biodiesel is proposed to be one of the cleanest and most efficient fuel alterna tives today. Everyday users of biodiesel have made a hobby out of creating the concoc tion, including Philip Brown, a chemistry professor at N.C. State. He said his knowledge of chemistry and his desire for sustainable development has made him into an advo cate for biodiesel fuel.
“I think most people who like to tinker would love it,” Brown said, “There are a lot of tinkerers out there who do a lot of hobbies, and it’s a nice exercise like any other hobby.”
According to Brown, mak ing biodiesel is not as difficult as it might seem. There are three ingredients required: frying oil, methanol and so dium hydroxide.
When it comes to synthe sizing ingredients to produce biodiesel, Brown said it helps to know some chemistry, though it is an chemical re action. The chemical reaction is called transesterification, which converts the fats with in frying oil into the biodiesel that can power a vehicle. With an apron, goggles, gloves and other safety precautions, the reaction can be made safely outside his home.
“It’s no more hazardous than filling up the gas tank in your lawn mower,” Brown said.
How does one go about ob taining these three necessary ingredients? Oddly enough, the frying oil might be the trickiest to gather.
Brown is a part-owner of a pub, The Player’s Retreat, and is also acquainted with the owner. Therefore, he is authorized to use the left-over frying oil from the pub’s kitchen. However, for most, it may not be so easy to obtain their own cheap waste oil.
Restaurants sell leftover frying oil to companies such as those producing biodiesel large-scale who are in need of cheap oil. Because the restau rants can sell the leftover oil, there may not be oil available to give to citizens making homemade biodiesel.
Even though restaurants sell millions of pounds of oil to biodiesel companies, there is still not enough available oil waste to mass produce biodiesel fuel. Because of this, there are new ways be ing developed to create the necessary oil efficiently and at an effective price.
Scientists are currently working toward creating oils that could be used for the production of biodiesel. One option that is being tested in the scientific community is the growing of algae and the extraction of the oils the algae produce. According to Brown, because algae grow at a rapid pace and produce a large quantity of oil, they could potentially provide enough oil to mass produce biodiesel fuel.
Scientists are also geneti cally engineering microor ganisms to produce the oils needed to create biodiesel, but currently, this practice is not yet cost effective enough to be used on a broad scale.
The last two ingredients that are used to create bio diesel, sodium hydroxide and methyl alcohol, can be bought in stores for a low price in comparison to the cost of diesel and petroleum. Extreme caution should be used when handling these chemicals, especially the catalyst, sodium hydroxide.
“Sodium hydroxide, that’s lye,” Brown said. “That’s what they throw down the drains to unclog them. You’d never want to get that splashed on you. You could end up burn ing your eyes out.”
Once the biodiesel is made, Brown believes the results are rewarding.
“My Mercedes has over half a million miles on it,” Brown said, “It still sounds beauti ful, quiet and efficient. If you ever had a spill, biodiesel is perfectly biodegradable. It doesn’t hurt anything. You could even put it in your mouth and gargle with it.”
According to Brown, a ve hicle running on biodiesel has slightly lower miles per gallon than those running on regular diesel, but not enough to impact the economic effi ciency of making and using biodiesel fuel. For Brown, the cost of biodiesel turns out to be 80 cents per gallon as op posed to the approximate $4 per gallon of regular diesel.
Even though Brown is an advocate for biodiesel fuel, he still believes there are more efficient fuel sources soon to come.
“I think in the future, when we all have our own fusion generators, that will be nirvana,” Brown said.
But for now, there are a lim ited variety of fuel sources to choose from, none of which are considered by the scientif ic community to be economi cally or environmentally ef ficient enough to be used sust ainably.
Despite its shortcomings, could biodiesel put an end to this and be the clean, sustain able fuel the world has been searching for?
Brown said, “The way I look at biofuel right now, it’s a great fuel, but it’s not going to solve our fuel problem. But diesel engines are still mar velous engines.”
