School bus makes fuel as well as burns it

VANCEBORO — William Shaw breathed in the sweet-smelling air of a workshop at West Craven High School, and noted he was surprised the air would smell so clean.

Shaw was part of a team of five science and agriculture teachers from the Craven County Schools district who spent a week last month learning how to make biofuel from the oil of crushed canola seeds and peanuts to power a yellow school bus.

 “We walked in here today and the whole building smells great,” said Shaw, an agriculture teacher at West Craven High. “You wouldn’t think it’s diesel fuel.”

The teachers were trained to make biofuel as part of a plan to launch a renewable energy course called “Renewable Energy and Agriculture” at West Craven and Havelock high schools in the fall, and eventually to demonstrate how renewable energy is made for students district-wide.

The district received a $49,000 grant from the Biofuel Center of North Carolina last spring to pay for the training. The money was also used to purchase a school bus that was going to be removed from the district’s fleet to convert it into a biofuels processor, said Darlene Moss, Craven County Schools’ career and technical education director.

The Pittsboro-based company Piedmont Biofuels, a cooperative that makes and sells biofuels among other services, built a processor for the bus that can generate up to 40 gallons of fuel from the oil of renewable sources such as canola.

Instead of orderly rows of seats for students, the inside of the bus is nearly filled with equipment to turn seed oil into fuel.

The yellow bus — that is now a mobile biofuel processing unit — will travel between schools to show students how renewable fuels are made, Moss said.

Descriptive panels are being designed to wrap around the outside of the vehicle to show students, from start to finish, how biofuel is made, Moss said, and staff members are writing the new renewable energy course that will involve hands-on activities involving biofuels production.

 “Once we get further along with this, our hope is to be able to take the bus to elementary and middle schools to talk to students about renewable fuels or renewable energy,” Moss said. “The bus moves the processor from one location to another.”

There are fields of canola growing at both West Craven and at Havelock high schools that were planted by students and teachers last year. There are about three quarters of an acre of canola planted at West Craven, and about a quarter of an acre at Havelock.

Moss said the canola seeds were donated by Avoca Inc. and the alternative energy company Red Birch Energy. The plants are in a dormant state, but Moss said she expects they will grow three feet in three weeks around April and produce yellow flowers and tiny black seeds that can be harvested this summer.

Jo Ann Riddle, an agriculture teacher at Havelock High, said a parent tilled their field, and then her students fertilized the land and planted the seeds in mid-September. Since then, they’ve enjoyed watching the crop grow. This is the first time her class has grown a field crop like canola.

“We wanted students to be able to see the canola from the farm to the fuel — to see it growing and the whole process,” Moss said. “We know we’re looking at a green economy, and federal stimulus dollars are there for the development of green jobs. We feel like renewable energy and renewable fuels are a huge percentage in that.”

At the teacher training last month, Chris Jude, project manager for Piedmont Biofuels, showed the teachers how to create biofuel using the processor, and how to test the quality of their product to see if it could run the vehicle.

The process involved crushing the seeds to create oil as well as of meal, running the oil through a filter and then into a biodiesel reactor, where the oil is mixed with methanol, a catalyst, and heat from the bus engine. The liquid is left to settle so the biodiesel can be separated and sent to a wash tank. There are four tests the teachers had to complete to ensure the quality of the fuel.

The biofuel will be blended with petroleum diesel to eventually run the bus, Moss said.

Jude said that the biofuel releases fewer harmful emissions into the air such as soot and sulfur dioxide, and it can even have a sweet aroma during its production period.

 “I believe that we are entering into new era of needing to use a lot more renewable fuels,” Jude said. “There’s a job market out there and it’s the way we need to be moving.”

Shaw added that he believes that the project will be a draw for students because it is a practical application of the scientific concepts they learn in class.

“They really learn a lot better when you put a practical application — product based learning,” he said. “We’re able to show the whole process of how to make fuel.”

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.

Biofuel Center of North Carolina

The center was created in 2007 by the N.C. General Assembly to implement the North Carolina Plan for Strategic Biofuels Leadership. The plan calls for 10 percent of liquid fuels sold in the state to come from biofuels that are locally grown and produced by 2017.

For more information, visit biofuelscenter.org.