Lincoln County High School agriculture teacher Ryan Saxe (left) demonstrates the school’s biodiesel program to dignitaries and visitors, including state schools Superintendent Steve Paine (center, left), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (center) and Lincoln County Schools Superintendent David Roach (center, right).
HAMLIN - It's just a start, but Katelyn Brogan thinks Lincoln County High School's first batch of biodiesel fuel is the beginning of something big.
"With the rising fuel costs, we're going to have to burn something other than fossil fuels," the Lincoln County High School junior said Friday, as staff members and students at the high school prepared to unveil the school's biodiesel-fuel program.
"We're the only high school on the East Coast doing this program," she said. "It's mostly on the college level."
"We can now produce this [fuel] at less cost than we can buy a barrel of oil," Saxe said. Just running one bus on biodiesel will save the Lincoln County school board about $32,000 a year.
Saxe said the fuel program - operated and managed by students - will start by turning used cooking oil into diesel fuel. Administrators already have bought the necessary equipment, and turned out the first batch of fuel this week for an audience that included Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
Saxe said it costs less than $1 to convert used cooking oil into a gallon of biodiesel. Students can sell the biodiesel for $2 a gallon to help fund the program.
School has been out for about a week, but Saxe said a dedicated group of students has stayed over to make the school's first two batches of fuel, about 40 gallons at a time.
"It takes about six hours to get a finished batch altogether," said Brogan, patiently pumping ethanol into a big plastic tank of cooking oil to separate out the fatty acids.
Students first determine how much fatty acid is in the used oil, then add chemicals to separate the mixture out into biodiesel and glycerin. Saxe said the fuel is then washed with water, dried out and filtered into a tank. He said the finished product can be put directly into any diesel-powered vehicle, although he recommends putting the pure biodiesel in a little bit at a time to flush out deposits left by the old diesel fuel.
"We're learning so much from it, and you're helping out your county and your state," said Brogan. "You're not just learning about the environment, you're learning about the science part of it."
Once the program is up and running in the fall, Saxe expects to produce 200 to 400 gallons of fuel a week, enough to supply the school board and have some left over to sell to local farmers.
But that's just the start. Saxe wants to develop and teach technologies that students will need in coming decades, as alternate fuel sources become more and more important. By 2025, he predicted, alternative fuel technologies will create more than 5 million jobs.
In the second phase of the program, Saxe plans on having students cultivate and process canola and other oil-producing plants to turn into fuel. Soybeans yield about 40 gallons of fuel-producing oil per year for every acre planted, but canola yields 200 gallons of oil per acre per year.
Saxe said Lincoln County High already has 20 acres of land available to plant crops, enough to yield 4,000 gallons of oil a year, which in turn will produce about 3,800 gallons of biodiesel.
One of the advantages of canola, he said, is that it is typically planted in the fall and grows through the winter, so that it won't compete with other food or cash crops. Saxe hopes to start planting canola in the fall and begin harvesting the crop and producing fuel in the spring of 2009.
Rockefeller, who helped pump the first couple of gallons of biodiesel into the waiting county school bus, said he was impressed by Lincoln County's work.
Rockefeller said biodiesel technology can help reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 50 percent to 100 percent, compared with other fuels, can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 100 percent and reduce particulate pollution by up to 75 percent.
He praised the work of Saxe and his students.
"You're looking at the future," he said, "and it's a future that will actually work."
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