By Kelly Morgan,Staff Writer
A college junior has built a biodiesel blender, which can be used to make alternative fuel.

UNITY – Evan Franklin grins as he turns the key on the green electric cart and drives off across campus.

“This is the second half of my victory lap,” he announces, looking back over his shoulder to make sure an attached trailer with his hand-built machine is in tow.

The machine is a biodiesel processor. The 20-year-old Durham native, a junior at Unity College, has been building it since becoming interested in alternative energy in high school. He’d just finished the machine after getting out of class Tuesday afternoon.

Chemical reaction

“What it does is it takes used vegetable oil and it takes out the fat so you can use it instead of diesel fuel,” he explained, going on to describe the chemical reaction that makes the process work.

Franklin was confident his network of mixing tanks, plastic pipes, tubes and motors would turn used cooking oil from the campus dining hall into fuel for home heating systems and diesel engines.

He hopes to make biodiesel, an alternative fuel made from renewable resources such as soybean or other vegetable oils, and often mixed with petroleum-based diesel for cleaner emissions.

According to Amber Thurlo Pearson, a spokeswoman for the National Biodiesel Board, an industry trade organization, 500,000 gallons of biodiesel were produced in the United States in 1999. “For 2005, we expect it to be between 50 and 60 million gallons.”

And that’s pure biodiesel, or B100. Today it is most commonly made in the Midwest from soybeans, although alternative biodiesel sources ranging from wood to algae are being researched.

B100 is typically blended with petroleum-based diesel for use in engines or heating systems, said Uldis Vanags, an energy policy analyst with the Maine Office of Energy Independence and Security. A ratio of up to 50 percent biodiesel, or B50, is fine for heating systems. Often people chose B5 or B10 blends because they are cheaper, however.

For diesel engines, automobile manufacturers recommend using no more than a 5 percent blend, but a 20 percent blend, or B20, is common.

“This is the beginning of what we hope will be a large-scale development,” Vanags said, referring to the interest in biodiesel. Already there are others like Franklin who are converting used vegetable oil into biodiesel for private use. Several state buildings, including the Blaine House, are heated with the alternative fuel. The municipalities of Bangor and Falmouth, and L.L. Bean, use biodiesel in their diesel vehicles.

There are at least three biodiesel distributors in the state and three retail outlets where those with diesel engines can fill up. There’s also a new facility in Belgrade called Bean Commercial Grease, which Vanags said is believed to produce as much as 500 gallons of B100 a week.

It works’

In the past, the cost of biodiesel was prohibitive, he said. With oil prices soaring, however, the alternative fuel is now comparable.

At Frontier energy in South China, B20 was selling for $2.94 a gallon Tuesday. Owner Joel Glatz has sold heating oil for nearly two decades, and started offering biodiesel for vehicles and home heating in 2001.

“It works, it’s cleaner, it’s renewable,” he said. “You can call it a dream, for sure, but you know, the vision is turning. OK, we’ve proved the technology. The technology works.”

The next step, Glatz said, is figuring which crops to grow to support biodiesel production in the state. Maine uses about 800 million gallons of petroleum-based fuel each year for road vehicles, heavy equipment, heating and commercial uses.

Studies have shown the state has the capacity to produce about 40 million gallons of biodiesel a year, which would cover about 5 percent of that market.

“Biodiesel is not a panacea. It is not the end. It’s a tool in the toolbox, and until now we’ve kind of had the idiot wrench,” Glatz said.

Back at Unity, Evan Franklin filled his machine with packets of yellow and red Kool-Aid before starting a test run Tuesday. It takes an hour of mixing to produce a batch of biodiesel, but Franklin produced a red-orange simulation in minutes.

Mick Womersley, his project adviser, had noted the importance of such projects because of their use as teaching tools. Also, he said, “This is quite an engineering feat for Unity College – we don’t teach engineering.”

Franklin, a conservation law enforcement major, admitted he would have built a hang glider instead if he’d had the money.

This project was really just a hobby, he noted. “I like going out in the garage and playing with tools.”