About 37 billion gallons of diesel fuel was used on U.S. highways in 2004, according to the Energy Information Administration. A group of Marquette Senior High School students would like to see that number decrease significantly.
The Biodiesel Student Research Group is part of a year-long project funded by the Michigan State Energy Office. Their goal is to create awareness of biofuels, which are renewable and available on the earth’s surface, as opposed to petroleum fuels, which are not.

Learning at lunchtime
About forty students have been meeting two or three times a week since January during lunchtime and after school to work on the project. Junior Laura Petrasky took an interest right away.
“I have always been interested in changes in economics because (the price of oil) is affecting our country,” Petrasky said. “ And I really care about the environment, and seeing what’s happening to it [with] global warming, I wanted to see any possible differences, and biodiesel seemed to have some effect.”
Junior Zachary Bergmann said he’s learning a lot from the project.
“I didn’t know a lot about biodiesel before,” he said. “I thought it was kind of the same as diesel. I’ve been doing research with the rest of the group and I’ve found out a lot of different things, like how it’s better for the environment and how overall it just seems like a much better alternative fuel source. It’s better than diesel or gasoline for the time being.”
The project is funded through a grant administered by Northern Options, a Marquette-based organization that promotes renewable energy and conservation in the Upper Peninsula. T.J. Brown, coordinator of the project, is contracted through Northern Options.
“We’ve been asking the students to look into different aspects of biodiesel from production to distribution, policy and different ways that you can make biodiesel,” Brown said.
The idea for the project came about when Jennifer Silverston, director of Northern Options, visited a biodiesel production plant in Marquette’s Sister City, Higashiomi (Japan) last spring. Silverston was inspired to create a biodiesel program in Marquette, and secured the grant from the Energy Office.

Economic and environmental benefits
Biodiesel can be made from a variety of sources including soybean plants, rapeseed oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, palm oil, switchgrass or algae. It has a number of benefits. For instance, the price doesn’t fluctuate like oil. It is also more environmentally friendly than petrodiesel.
“We have information and the infrastructure to work with farmers and other companies and businesses to make fuel out of stuff that is readily renewable on the surface of the earth,” Brown said. “A great part about biodiesel is you’re not contributing to the carbon dioxide cycle because the energy that you’re using is already in the cycle.
“They add sulfur to diesel to make it so that diesel engines have lubrication. So using just two percent of biodiesel, you can completely eliminate sulfur from diesel, which is one of the main contributors to smog and air pollution.”
Diesel motors built after 1984 do not require any modifications to use biodiesel.
Brown is confident that biodiesel will positively impact the economy of the United States.
“We can make it anywhere in our country, so we can be dependent on ourselves and stimulate our economy and provide our own fuel for transportation and heating so we don’t have to rely on other countries that have mass quantities of fuel,” Brown said. “I think that the future for biodiesel in the United States is very promising. A lot of people can benefit from its use, and it can create a lot of jobs.”
Brewing up a batch of biodiesel
In the project, not only do the students learn about the advantages of biodiesel, they produce the fuel.
In their high school science lab, the students perform many experiments in the process of making fuel from waste vegetable oil.
They begin the process of creating biodiesel by extracting the glycerin from a triglyceride molecule. They also perform a hydrometer experiment, in which they determine the gravity of the fluid, and a gel point experiment, in which they determine at what temperature different blends of biodiesel freeze. Of course, safety precautions have to be taken when working with some of the substances.
“When you’re making biodiesel you have to use some toxic products,” Brown said. “You’re using sodium hydroxide and methanol, which can both be extremely harmful if you don’t take precautions. So when we do it, we make sure we’re in the lab and we have a well-ventilated area and we wear safety goggles and lab coats, so if anything does spill on us we’ll be protected. We wear latex gloves so if we get any on our hands it won’t be on our skin.”

Marquette schools use it in two buses
A major component of the project involves running two Marquette Area Public Schools buses on biodiesel blend. Because the fuel the group makes doesn’t meet industry standards, certified biodiesel is purchased from a company in Lower Michigan. Biodiesel is generally mixed with diesel at different ratios. The research group is using blends of five, ten, fifteen and twenty percent biodiesel for the buses.
“It would be great someday if I can park a truck and top off all the buses with biodiesel,” Brown said. “Any blend of biodiesel that you use will reduce the pollution, which is beneficial for health reasons for the kids that are getting on the buses because they’re not inhaling as [many] diesel fumes as normal.”
When kids inhale biodiesel, it’s likely to be more appetizing than diesel.
“It smells like fried food or Thai food,” Petrasky said.
“It’s not a bad smell,” Bergmann said. “It resembles a fish fry.”

Part of a bigger picture
The biodiesel project has broadened Petrasky’s view of alternative fuels.
“Before I was more focused on concentrating on one type of alternate energy, and now I realize that no one type is the solution, that you have to put your interest in a lot of different types, such as wind, solar, biodiesel, etc.,” she said.
Petrasky believes there is much the project can achieve.
“What I really think this project is about is just educating people on different types of energy fuels and getting people to use them,” she said.
The group plans to take what they’ve learned to other school districts.
“We’re going to try to go to seven or eight schools this fall and present to them our project, and also hopefully perform some experiments at other high schools with this,” Brown said.
Bergmann would like to see one particular outcome of the project.
“I’d like to see the project have the school running (all) their buses on biodiesel, whether it’s completely biodiesel or whatever percent biodiesel,” he said. “I think that it’s definitely possible that it would happen.”
—8-18 Media

Editor’s Note: This story was written by Thorin Burkhard-Horn, seventeen, and Joseph Short, fourteen, with contributions from Ben Brow, fourteen and Ben Harris, eleven.

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