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High School Student Produces Homemade Biodiesel Using Restaurant
Fryer Oil
Danny Carpenter was just engaging in one of his favorite past
times, reading the latest issue of Transworld Snowboarding magazine,
when he ran across an article about a professional snowboarder who
drove across the country in a truck fueled by vegetable oil. Amazed
that such a feat was possible, Danny and his dad Rick spent the next
year reading anything and everything they could lay their hands on
to do with biodiesel production. They even stumbled across a class
on home biodiesel production. Luckily for them, a session was being
offered at the Atlanta Food Bank. So, father and son quickly signed
up for and attended the class in January 2006. In the class, they learned
the basic chemistry of the process, made a mini test batch, and learned
how to build a 55-gallon biodiesel processor.
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Determined to make their
own biodiesel, the backyard duo built a 4-foot by 8-foot shed on
the side of the family home, finished all of the
processing equipment, and began making biodiesel. Carpenter says
it took a few weeks for them to work out the process on a large scale,
but in October 2006, they presented their first 55-gallon batch of
homemade biodiesel, produced from used restaurant fryer oil (Ted’s
Montana Grill supplied used canola oil to the team), to a friend for
use in his landscaping truck. The homemade biodiesel is also used for
fuel in Carpenter’s truck and has been burned in a kerosene heater
that heats the shed during the winter months.
In his senior year at
The Galloway School, Carpenter was assigned the task of locating
a senior internship. And he thought to himself, what would be better
than to further his work in biodiesel production in an actual research
laboratory environment. It was then that he learned of the work being
conducted at Georgia Tech’s Food Processing Technology Division
(FPTD). He contacted John Pierson, a principal research engineer and
leader of FPTD’s Food Safety, Environment, and Energy Technology
group, and began a one-week internship in February 2007 to test the
efficacy of his production process.
Working alongside Pierson and Robert
Wallace, a chemist, Carpenter conducted bomb calorimetry (the measurement
of the amount of heat used in a chemical reaction) to assess the
energy content of several samples of material, including commercial
biodiesel,
straight vegetable oil, his own homemade biodiesel, and pump #2 petroleum
diesel. He also made a mini batch of biodiesel, looked at a gas chromatograph
of biodiesel, and heated and filtered his homemade biodiesel in an
effort to increase the purity.
“The most exciting thing that
I learned was that my biodiesel only has about 6 percent less energy
than #2 pump diesel,” says Carpenter.
He found that discovery
interesting because he says one of the biggest criticisms of using
biodiesel is the dramatic power loss from regular diesel. “For
whatever reason, the commercial biodiesel that we tested had close
to 30 percent less energy than the petroleum diesel, and perhaps this
is why biodiesel has a bad reputation as far as energy content. I assume
that the starting feedstock as well as the process differs between
my biodiesel and the commercial biodiesel, but it is unlikely that
driving a car you would be able to notice a less than 6 percent energy
drop in the fuel you are using.”
During the internship, Carpenter
also had the opportunity to attend a Georgia Tech graduate design
theory class. He says the internship provided him with invaluable insight
into what it is like to be an engineer both in the lab and working
for an engineering firm.
He is currently a freshman at Virginia Tech
studying mechanical engineering with a business minor and a green
concentration. And while he will stop producing biodiesel for a short
time to pursue
his studies, Carpenter says he hopes to find a group interested in
alternative fuels and maybe set up a small biodiesel manufacturing
plant.
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