The Tiger

Issue date: 9/8/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Max Thomason Researchers took an old body frame and created a new vehicle runs on biosynthetic fuels. [Click to enlarge]

With environmental issues increasing over the past decade, much effort has been put forth to promote renewable resources of energy. Clemson has taken part in this effort by organizing the Green Tiger initiative, a program that promotes demonstration of renewable and sustainable energy technologies coming from research on campus. One important step in this initiative is a project from the Bio-systems Engineering (BE) Department at Clemson University, where bio-diesel fuel is generated from vegetable-based oils such as canola oil, cottonseed oil and waste oils from eating establishments on campus.

"The ongoing project began several years ago at the lab level and is now at the pilot production stage," said Terry Walker, Associate Professor of Bio-systems Engineering. Walker and Phil Carroll from Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) on campus are the project directors, making BE and EHS the two main components. Students from the department assist with the project and helped with the design. Gehn Fujii, a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate currently interning at BMW in Germany, is one student in particular who was important in the initiation of the pilot stage.

Volunteers from the organization Students for Environmental Awareness (SEA) have also helped out with the project. "We will expect more participation from many groups as this thing grows in capacity, such as students and faculty from Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, the Business school, Agricultural Economics and many others who could play an important role," Walker said.

The process of making the fuel involves reacting vegetable-based oils with ethanol and the catalyst potassium hydroxide to produce bio-diesel ethyl esters. "This promotes the use of ethanol and the process is mostly non-toxic compared to using methanol-based bio-diesel," he said. According to Walker, the Midwest is currently leading in the production of bio-diesel fuel due to the large amount of soy crops, but with growing interest across the country and throughout the world, a number of new investors are looking at production in South Carolina.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools