Firing Up with Frymax

With classic Yankee ingenuity and a desire to fight global warming, two men are on a mission to wean themselves, their employers, and their New England towns off of fossil fuels by developing and distributing "biodiesel," a biodegradable, nontoxic fuel that can be simply made with an over-the-counter recipe of vegetable or soybean oil, methanol, and lye.

A 55 gallon drum of used fry oil ready to be made into
biodiesel. Photo courtesy of The Chewonki Foundation

Peter Arnold, who works for the Chewonki Foundation, a nonprofit environmental education institution in Wiscasset, Maine, makes regular rounds to five restaurants to collect drums of used cooking oil. In an old pole barn, Arnold and his team combine the oil with special measures of methanol and powdered lye under a strict 120° temperature, stir it for one hour, and let it settle for about 8 hours. The resulting liquid separates into heavy glycerin, which settles to the bottom and is found in things like soap and pharmaceuticals, and a lighter, more plentiful biodiesel, which is instantly ready to burn in any furnace or diesel engine.

The Chewonki Biodiesel Project's production equipment.

"For every gallon of fossil fuels we burn," says Arnold, "we release 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But with biodiesel, we can cut that figure by about 78 percent." Amazingly enough, the United States produces enough waste greases a year to make 500 million gallons of biodiesel. Learn more at www.biodiesel.org.

Peter Arnold with a finished drum of ready-to-pump biodiesel.

Chewonki's Biodiesel Project arose from the foundation's mission to consume as few resources as possible, become energy self-sufficient, and to reduce its contribution to global warming. The foundation's ultimate goal is to produce approximately 20,000 gallons of biodiesel per year-enough to heat four or more buildings, generate power for 50 percent of Chewonki's electricity use, and power a 15-passenger van, a Volvo station wagon, a tractor, and several staff vehicles. They have been using biodiesel already to heat and power their vehicles for more than a year. The project initially received funding from the Maine Technology Institute to demonstrate the usefulness of local waste sources.

Further south, in the picturesque seaside hub of Newburyport, Massachusetts, David Hall intends to convert the vehicles he uses in his real estate development company to biodiesel. Once that mission is accomplished, Hall hopes to woo the local public works department into trying the innovative concoction in its truck and school bus fleets. He's already approached Newburyport's fire chief, who was intrigued at the concept.

"The whole business with September 11 and the fact that we buy so much oil from the Middle East, it's time to do something different than the status quo," Hall told the Boston Globe. He wishes he had time to manufacture his own biodiesel like Chewonki. "The cool thing is it's not that hard. Ultimately I would like to get all the newer diesel engines in Newburyport using biodiesel."

Hall found a distributor in World Energy Alternatives, which operates six production facilities around the country and is responsible for approximately 75 percent of U.S. biodiesel sales. With help from World Energy, the first biodiesel pump in Massachusetts opened just last month in Chelsea, Mass., at the urging of the New England Biodiesel Initiative.

Nate Byrnes, of the New England Biodiesel Initiative, filling his Volkswagen with Bio-Diesel at the Dennis K. Burke filling station in Chelsea, Mass. Photo courtesy of Ted Burke.

Biodiesel seems to be gaining momentum nationally, especially in New England. The innovative fuel can be found powering campus buses at the University of Vermont, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, electric and gas utility N-Star fleets, and will soon be firing up the entire public works fleet for the city of Keene, N.H., where Keene State College has also begun a biodiesel pilot program.

--Katurah Mackay