Kim Foster-Tobin
Columbia residents can now recycle cooking oil at the city’s Public Works facility off Harden Street.
The city will donate the cooking oil to a Winnsboro company, Midlands Biofuels, which will convert it to biodiesel. The company will then sell the biodiesel back to the city to use in one of its garbage trucks.
The program, which is dubbed Southern Fried Fuel Initiative, has two purposes:
• First, to cut down on the amount of grease dumped into the city’s sewer system. Grease last year caused 460 sewer spills, which dumped 2.1 million gallons of raw sewage into the community.
• Second, to reduce the vehicle emissions of harmful pollutants that contribute to bad ozone, the kind that is formed at ground level by a mixture of chemicals in warm weather.
It should be against the law to dump cooking oil into the sewer system, why not make biodiesel out of it instead like these people are doing? Every community needs a place to dump the WVO.
NATIONAL BIODIESEL BOARD NEXT GENERATION SCIENTISTS Narasimharao Kondamudi and York Smith, founding members of Next Generation Scientists for Biodiesel, study at the University of Nevada, Reno. (PRNewsFoto/National Biodiesel Board) JEFFERSON CITY, MO UNITED STATES
The next generation of thought leaders is gearing up to lead America's energy efforts. And biodiesel, our nation's only commercially available advanced biofuel, is front and center.
Student scientists from Dartmouth College to Oregon State University are leading a new Next Generation Scientists for Biodiesel initiative. The group has formed to demonstrate and grow support for biodiesel among tomorrow's scientific leaders.
Lucas Ellis of Dartmouth, pursuing his Master of Science in Biochemical Engineering, is one of four co-chairs of the effort. "In college there is an eagerness to become an advocate or have a cause, and mine was the environment, science and educating others about sustainability," Ellis said. "Biodiesel combined all of those and became my passion."
Since then, his passion has led him to create biodiesel education projects in three states, including organizing laboratories to teach students about the chemistry of biodiesel. At West Virginia University, he created a biodiesel organization that today hosts biodiesel events to help recruit kids into studying science.
Ethanol subsidies could be more effective if tied to oil prices, the Purdue University study suggests
That is the recommendation from Purdue University agricultural economist Wally Tyner in a study funded by the National Science Foundation.
The study suggests that a variable subsidy rate could protect ethanol producers from low oil and ethanol prices, but that the government would save money when oil prices are high and financial support for ethanol is unnecessary.
Current government subsidies for ethanol – around 45 cents per gallon – are to expire at the end of the year, with legislation needed from Congress to extend or replace the incentives.
Professor Tyner’s study, published in the October issue of the journal Energy Policy, shows how a variable rate could be the most beneficial.
“We could see ethanol plants close if the subsidy isn’t renewed in some form,” Prof Tyner said.
Do you think this creative idea would work in the case of ethanol? How about biodiesel? At least it shows some creative thinking that would take us down the inevitable path of diminishing oil.
Shell and Cosan SA Industrio and Comercio, the world's largest sugar producer, finalized a multi-billion dollar joint venture today for biofuels and sugar in Brazil, and in the process gave the world of biofuel startups a reason to get out of bed tomorrow.
Under the deal, Shell will contribute close to $2 billion dollars, 2,740 service stations, its ongoing activities in jet fuel, and its investments in Codexis (Shell owns 15 percent of that company) and Iogen Energy, another biofuel company. Cosan, for its part, will contribute 23 sugar mills and more than 1,700 service stations. The memorandum of understanding was first signed in Feburary. In all, the new venture has an estimated value of $12 billion.