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‘French-Fried Fuel’ Powers School Buses
By Brooks Blanton
Fox News
It’s not unusual to catch a whiff of french fries and fried chicken drifting through the halls of East Burke High School in Connelly Springs, North Carolina. But you might be surprised to find out that the smell of fried food isn’t always coming from the high school cafeteria. East Burke Teacher Bob Smith and his 12th grade science students are processing used grease and turning it into biodiesel in the school’s science lab. What once was used by local restaurants to fry up fish, chicken and french fries can actually be processed and poured into the gas tanks of the district’s school buses. Mucheng Yang, a 12th Grader at East Burke High School, thought using grease to make fuel for buses would never work.
“It has been fun doing this,” Yang says. “The best part is making biodiesel and putting it in the bus and see it go off. It’s just a good thing and an amazing thing to see that happen.”
The process sounds complex to those who may not have a background in science. The oil is heated and poured into a simple kitchen blender where it is mixed with a compound that changes the molecular structure of the grease. The chemical mixture is then mixed or washed with water several times and the result is a yellow liquid that can be used to power the diesel engines of school buses.
“In the beginning the students wanted to call this ‘The French Fry Bus.’ But once you break down the grease from the local restaurant, the odor is gone because chemically you have made a different compound called biodiesel,” Smith says. “So it has no odor and we named it the magic fuel bus.”
Mr. Smith heard President Obama’s challenge to use less fossil fuels over the coming years a step further and started toying with using cooking oil as a way to power the districts fleet of buses. The businessman, turned science teacher launched “The Magic Fuel Bus” program last year.
“We really wanted to tie into the President’s Energy Plan,” Smith says. “We make the biodiesel and ran it in the school buses to demonstrate that what he was talking about really worked. And we had no problems on the buses, everything worked fine.”
The classroom isn’t equipped to make large batches of fuel and the entire process can take up to three days, so the district buses can’t run on processed cooking oil alone. But Mr. Smith and his students have whipped up enough biodiesel to be able to study the effects on the bus engines and the positive effects on the environment. So far, they say, the news is good.
“There are benefits from it. There is less odor, less pollution, less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, less global warming and it improves the mileage for the buses,” Yang said.
Smith hopes “The Magic Fuel Bus” program gets some attention for this rural High School in Eastern North Carolina. His ultimate goal is to convince The President to come to Burke County to meet the students and see the buses run on cooking oil in person. He knows it’s a long shot to get the attention of the White House, but at the very least he’s happy with what the experiment is giving back to these students.
“Getting them interested in careers in science and engineering by doing hands on work, taking classroom lessons and applying them to a real world problem,” Smith says. “They have learned a lot from this hands on activity and I am very optimistic that they will be finalists for a $100,000 college scholarship from The Siemens Corporation that they are in the running for.”
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
Ah, yes, the old bio-diesel option. Certainly a good option for a green fuel, but there isn’t enough used cooking oil in the US to make this an end-all solution for our transportation sector. However, I have a method that works fairly well.
I’ve converted my vehicle to run off of farts. To ensure that I have an ever steady supply of butt gas, I’ve hired a fat, do-nothing liberal to live in the trunk of my car. Granted I’ve decked the trunk out to make comfortable living arrangements for him, complete with broadband internet access through my satellite link to ensure he’s not bored. Thus he’s happy to type away on Moveon.org all day long, while scarfing bean burritos to ensure I’ve got plenty of fuel to go about my business.
Now imagine if we employed this on a national scale. We’d actually find an effective use for one of our most abundant resources, that being do-nothing liberals.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Fred – that’s brutal – funny but brutal. my follow up question would be, if all of the do-nothing libs were in the trunks of conservatives cars, what would those that dole out welfare benefits do?
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Fred..Fred…Fred…typical conservative B.S. While those of us with solutions are out there trying to fix your foul ups, you are the one sitting on your fat bum in denial. You stay in your little box while I go out and make it better. It’ll be o.k.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Fred Hater… Fred Hater… Fred Hater….
what are we going to do with you hmmm…
As usual the lib thinks hes helping the world..
I know this is a shock to your ego but your not..
Your f$#4k it up. Stop it… Repeat this 100 times.
The government is not the solution its the problem.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:36 am
That’s well and good until the government realizes that it is losing tax money from people making their own fuel. The result will be to levy a special tax on those who make their own fuel just like state governments did in the 80s to those who used solar power effectively killing the “alternative energy” ideas.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
This is not a new idea or a break through. It has been done before.
Also, has anyone of these kids/teacher questioned the cost of collecting the oil from the restaurants and making the fuel? I would bet that it probably cost more to make that biodiesel fuel.
Want to go green? Try walking to school or biking to school kids. Get off your lazy a—s and get some excercise while you are helping the environment.
October 25th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
We’ve been using old veggie oil as fuel for a long time (about 100 years). I’ve done the bio fuel stuff with my students for the last 3 years. We’ve also been using other waste oils as fuel. Instead of old oil being used as heating fuel, you can burn it in your diesels with minimal filtering/processing that can be done at home. More people do it than you think. And remember, diesel engines were never designed to run on diesel fuel! The original design was for a engine that could run on oil produced from plants grown on a farm for the farm etc. Heck, I’d rather give my money to farmers for clean biodiesel than the oil companies. We won’t have any Valdez spills to deal with either…
October 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Yawn…been there done that. Biodiesel is a great idea, but not cost effective. It kinda bothers me that students are messing around with methonal and Lye to make Biodiesel. Oh and what are they doing with the glycerine by-product?….hopefully making soap.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I hope that most school at least try this for a while. So they do something diffrent to save the world. YES, I sayed save the world the one we are living on. Well for now at least. In a madder of years we all thanks to these tip of guys for making it posible to live on a diffrent planet. So lates why i think many schools should try this.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I wonder if city’s / states could collect all this cooking oil from restaurants – for free of coarse – and work out a deal to make this biodiesel for the school buses and city buses. It isn’t a solution to the problem but it couldn’t hurt. And Lord knows we eat enough fried food in this country that cities might actually save big money. Oh by the way – it’s not just Liberals who are tired of oil and giving hard-earned money to terror-funding nations. I want the US to be self-sufficient.
October 31st, 2009 at 7:57 pm
as for the cost. I make mine for about $0.81 per gallon. I have also made it for as cheap as $0.65 per gallon. just depends on the cost of materials. Still pretty darn cheap and my truck runs better off of it.
November 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm
The consept of Bio Fuels sound great on the surface, but like most things in life it is far from that simple. The flaw is thinking that the oil was going to waste to begin with. It is illegal to just dump it, so where was it going before? Used oil products are usually collected buy a local small to medium sized business, then either sold to a processing plant, or processed locally. It is used to make asphalt, plastics and many other items. If the supply is removed by local governments to fuel their bus fleet, then the plastic, asphalt, and other businesses must find another source of oil, like crude oil from the Middle east. The large amout of farm land that is being converted to grow bio fuels is no longer being used to grow food. While we grow more than enough food for ourselves, we also feed large portions of the 3rd world. Food prices in these poor countries have doubled in the last 2 years, and as more farmland is used for bio fuels those prices will increase, and so will the rate of starvation and death. The environment community should concentrate more effort on the recapture of products that are currently not being recycled, like our overflowing landfills.