Ideas to burn
Student heats house, powers car with homemade biodiesel
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Mount St. Joseph Academy student Brian Ribbans, 17, displays a jar of biodiesel he processed in this tank in his West Rutland cellar. The fuel was made from discarded cooking oil from Rutland restaurants and will be used in his family’s furnace. Vyto Starinskas / Rutland Herald |
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By Cristina Kumka Staff Writer - Published: April 4, 2009
Gas prices were skyrocketing and President Barack Obama was on the campaign trail, calling on America to wean itself from nonrenewable energy sources.
Mount St. Joseph Academy student Brian Ribbans, 17, of West Rutland, was paying attention.
Ribbans and his father reacted, converting a used hot water heater in their basement into a 55-gallon biodiesel maker.
Now, Ribbans is heating his home, fueling a friend's car and has a chance to win millions of dollars in prizes at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Reno, Nev., in May.
What began as an idea to convert algae into fuel ended with Ribbans and science teacher Timothy McCue preparing for a flight to the world's largest international precollege science competition.
There, Ribbans, a soon-to-be University of Vermont environmental science major, will demonstrate his award-winning concept for converting used vegetable oil into efficient biodiesel, competing against 1,500 other science students from 50 countries.
The trip was one of many acknowledgements Ribbans received after competing in the 27th annual Vermont State Science and Math Fair on March 28.
His project, "The Purification of Waste Vegetable Oil into Biodiesel," won a silver medal from the Vermont Principal's Association and other accolades from the national chemistry and engineering organizations.
"If you ask the judges, they'll say a lot of the projects being submitted by the students in Vermont are at a higher level … college and graduate levels," McCue said.
Ribbans said he saw real-world demand for a product that he could try to make.
"This is what people are asking for," Ribbans said, plastic bottle of biodiesel in hand Friday as he sat in a classroom at MSJ.
"There is more and more of a demand for renewable energy sources … we saw global warming coming and gas prices going up."
Algae as a main ingredient turned out to be too expensive and impractical, so Ribbans and his dad researched how to make fuel from waste fry oil.
They took the used oil from Rutland restaurants and mixed it with methanol and sodium hydroxide in mason jars to make their first batches, Ribbans said.
Later, Ribbans and his dad would use information and formulas they acquired in an advanced science class, from consultants and the Internet to make the cleanest and most efficient biodiesel.
Biodiesel can be cleaner to make and can be produced for about 80 cents a gallon while producing about 8 percent less energy than regular diesel, Ribbans concluded.
It can be used to heat homes, light lanterns and fuel cars.
Ribbans' home is heated with it and his friend partially fills up the tank of his diesel car with it.
It's a small batch operation, not unlike others that have sprung up in Vermont over the past few years.
The Vermont Biofuels Project, a renewable energy initiative started in 2006, reported that related pilot projects have used "more than 78,500 gallons of blended biodiesel for heating, snow making and off-road vehicles reducing greenhouse emissions by an estimated 179 tons."
On the other hand, Vermonters used more than 678 million gallons of petroleum in 2004, including 63 million gallons of diesel for transportation and more than 183 million gallons for home heating, all purchased from outside the state, according to the VBP's annual report.
Dog River Alternative Fuels in Berlin was one of those pilot projects.
Owner John Hurley, one of the first commercial biodiesel producers in the state, said there always has been a market for biodiesel, but for it to be a sustainable source of energy and income for Vermont it has to be clean and produced in large quantities.
"Until somebody can build a serious plant that can handle that and make it economically viable it's going to be bits and pieces in slow growth," Hurley said.
"One percent of biodiesel adds 30 percent lubricity, which makes an engine run better," he said.
"It reduces the particulate matter from the smokestack so it's easier to breathe."
cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com
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