Media Credit: Alex Kadis
Two new buses will be added to Lehigh's fleet within the next week.
Biodiesel and new buses are the latest steps in Lehigh's efforts to fulfill its climate commitment and act upon student suggestions. Lehigh received its first shipment of the fuel in August, and is now using biodiesel in all of its diesel engine fleet. Lehigh uses 40 thousand gallons of diesel fuel each year. Two percent of Lehigh's extensive diesel fuel consumption now comes from biological products. The percentage used may seem low, said Brynn Buskirk, assistant director of marketing for Lehigh Business Services, "but it is actually a good starting level."
When schools become aware of biodiesel, they should all take similar steps. Biodiesel sets a good example for students that you should help the environment when and where you can, and school buses should all be running at least some percentage of biodiesel.
Sean Mo (center)
Vegetable oil isn’t just for cooking at Alma College.
Chemistry Assistant Professor Sean Mo and a team of students are working with campus food services, the organization Students United for Nature, and the college's physical plant to convert waste vegetable oil to biodiesel made up of fatty acid methyl ester.
Students in Mo’s laboratory courses who participated in the hands-on conversion experiments asked Mo if there was a large-scale application for the process. Steve Watkins, general manager of Sodexo, Alma’s food service vendor, offered Sodexo’s waste vegetable oil to the project.
Since then, Mo has been conducting workshops with students to get them acquainted with the conversion process and with the safety precautions. It is important to him that the students are in the lab working on the project and gaining ownership of the process.
Not only are these students familiar with the advantages of biodiesel, they actually know how to make the stuff. I would welcome them all, and of course, their instructor, Mr. Mo, to join us here at BDN.com.
Image from: http://www.chemrez.com/default.asp?link=BioPetroleum
MANILA - Chemrez Technologies Inc., the country’s top biodiesel, resins and oleochemical producer, reported that its unaudited consolidated net income improved by 3% to P371.9 million in the first 9 months of 2009 from P359.4 million in the same period last year.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, ChemrezTech said its consolidated sales for the first 9 months of the year reached P3.6 billion, 1% higher than the P3.55 billion recorded during the same period in 2008.
In terms of volume, the company's sales for the 9-month period jumped 63% over the same period last year. This was primarily due to the implementation of B2 (2% biodiesel blend for all diesel) effective February 6, 2009.
The country passed a B2 biodiesel mandate, and it appears to have greatly helped this local company. Is biodiesel good for business? It sure seems to be. Every day we see growth in the industry and science of biodiesel. I wouldn’t bet against it.
You might have heard about harnessing the power of algae to make biofuels, but the team at Joule Biotechnologies decided started from scratch — by redesigning the organisms themselves.
They genetically engineered organisms that use photosynthesis to directly create the molecules that form the basis of diesel. Their SolarConverter array system suspends these organisms in a solution within a light-permeable structure that looks something like a solar panel array. Point these arrays at the sun, and the critters turn carbon dioxide and sunlight into biodiesel. They expect their first plant to be online by 2011.
By 2011, this company plans to go online with their algae-to-biodiesel production plant. It almost seems like a science fiction story, but this is real science and real fuel. I hope we’ll get to see photos of the plant.