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SHENK WORKING TO MAKE SU GREEN
By Brendan deRoode West
Asst. News Editor
French fries are hardly synonymous with engine exhaust, and thinking of
grease hardly brings environmental consciousness to mind.
But times change, and you might detect the distinct aroma of fast food the next time a diesel-fueled vehicle passes by. It might even carry a Shippensburg University logo.
If senior Kyle Shenk has his way, the changes could come very soon.
Shenk, president of the university’s Student Environmental Action Coalition, spent a semester interning at Wilson College’s Fulton Center for Sustainable Living, where he helped perfect the process of refining grease into biodiesel. Shenk now teaches biodiesel workshops at Wilson College in his spare time.
A vegetable oil-based fuel, biodiesel can power any vehicle currently running on petroleum-based diesel fuel — in fact, according to Shenk, it can do it better.
Shenk also has worked with Shippensburg University faculty members, such as biology professors Todd Hurd and Tim Maret, geography/earth science professor Claire Jantz and chemistry professor John Richardson, to produce a fleet-based vehicle system that would run on biodiesel. The Environmental Student Committee, which Shenk co-chairs with Maret, oversees his project.
“We don’t have a plan to put (biodiesel) in the Raider (bus) system,” Shenk said. “I haven’t talked with Capital Area Transit, but something like that. Bio-vans, who knows?”
“You might find that right after you start to use biodiesel, you’ll have to change your oil filter,” Shenk said. “Because biodiesel cleans out an engine so fast, it clogs filters the first time. But after that, it will run fine.”
In his work at Wilson College, Shenk said he has seen the college completely eliminate its grease contract from its budget, converting all waste grease into biodiesel, which it uses to fuel maintenance and grounds-keeping vehicles.
“Basically what happens is you add methanol and lye to the used vegetable oil, and the methanol replaces glycerin molecules found in the fuel,” said Shenk, a geoenvironmental studies major. “The glycerin floats to the bottom, and what remains is biodiesel.”
Shenk presented some of his studies to the SU College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Board at the board’s April 21 meeting.
“This,” Shenk said, holding up a mason jar full of a dark amber liquid and jetsam, “is biodiesel. The stuff at the bottom is glycerol.”
According to Shenk, when you add more lye to the glycerol by-product, the compound forms soap.
“We just mix in more lye and whatever we have around that smells good, and we make soap,” Shenk said as he passed out the brown chunks of homemade soap to the board. The glycerol could also be composted, Shenk said.
The environmentally friendly fuel also largely reduces the amount of sulfates, hydrocarbons, carbon oxides and particulate matter that diesel-powered vehicles spew into the atmosphere, according to Shenk. So why hasn’t the United States abandoned petroleum in favor of biodiesel?
“On a large scale, it wouldn’t really work,” Shenk said. “For a farmer to fuel his equipment with grease from local fast-food restaurants is one thing, but we as Americans just don’t eat enough fast food for it to work nationally.”
According to Shenk, however, institutions like universities would benefit from biodiesel, because they produce grease and typically use diesel-fueled equipment.
“Right now, Shippensburg (University) only purchases the environmental credits it has to,” Shenk said. “A program like this would generate a lot of good publicity for the university.”
Shenk’s plans include what he calls an “appleseed processor,” a modified hot-water heater, to convert grease into biodiesel. Appleseed processors, sometimes called “reactors,” are “open-sourced” — not owned, patented or copyrighted by anyone — and only cost about $500 to build, Shenk said. The processor uses off-the-shelf parts to convert the vegetable-oil into fuel.
“It wouldn’t be expensive at all,” Shenk said of the cost to build a processor. “But creating test batches and finding the right mixture of methanol-to-grease would be. This wouldn’t be something that would allow us to just cut the grease contract out next year. It would take time, but it can happen.”
Although Shenk graduates this semester, he is returning in the fall for graduate studies and will continue the project.
“We’re going to be building a processor this summer, and then I’ll be back in the fall,” Shenk said.
The Slate