Vegetable Oil Road Trip

So, now that the project is officially over, what am I doing with all that free time now that I’m not driving somewhere, talking to classrooms, or interviewing people?

I’m looking for an opportunity (i.e. a job) in the biofuels, alternative energy, or other environment tech fields. I’m not completely sure where I should go, who I should talk to, etc. So, I’m trying to do everything I can think of, which includes:

• I’m currently in Tacoma, WA (just south of Seattle) because I’ll be attending the monthly meeting of the Northwest Biodiesel Network at the Phinney Center at 7PM tonight.
• I think I’ll go to Golden, CO to attend the annual Local Biodiesel Conference on July 13, 14, 15.
• I’m holding off on signing up because I want to make sure that there isn’t something else I should attend.
• I made a LinkedIn Profile for myself. If you’re on LinkedIn, and are into bio fuels, or environmental tech, contact me:
  View Sacha De’Angeli’s profile
• I’m on Monster.com too, but I’m not going to link to them – they don’t need my help.

So to you, dear readers: what should I do to find a job in biofuels?

A few weeks ago, I visited Acalanes H.S. and talked to three classes of seniors.

It was a real pleasure to meet these guys and I wish nothing but success to them as they enter the the next step in their education!

So, I finally developed the film from that encounter and uploaded the photos to the school gallery. Enjoy!

Vegetable Oil Road Trip Schools

So, Dumpster diving has been in the news a bit recently, mostly due to this NYT expose on Dumpster diving and freegan culture.

This reminded me of an idea I had a while ago for a blog post that was never actually written – so here it is:

During the planning and early discussion phase of this trip (i.e. last summer), we managed to generate a large portion of the financing for our voyage through Dumpster Diving.

In Madison, every August 15th is called “moving day” because of the very large number of annual (student) leases that expire. On August 15, a large number of people move in and out of apartments. As a result, the streets fill with trash and Dumpster Divers looking for good junk.

Madison (like most Midwestern cities) has a disproportionately large number of propane and charcoal grills – many of which find themselves homeless around August 15 or so. We drove around in my pickup truck, grabbed grills of the street, fixed them up with new hardware and paint as necessary, and sold them for a profit. I think we sold somewhere in the range of 6-7 propane grills and 3-4 charcoal grills, investing about $50-$60 total in paint and hardware, and earning about $50-$75 per grill.

It was a lot of fun-repairing grills appeals to my engineering sensibilities, and I liked diverting a significant chunk of metal and plastic from the landfill. On one (sadly unsalvageable) grill, I even found a mostly full tank of propane (worth ~$40)! Had that tank gone to the landfill, it could have caused damage to the environment, landfill equipment, and may have endangered the safety of sanitation workers!

Some interesting reading:
“On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner
I read this for my English 101 class – a great story discussing the mechanics of Dumpster Diving, possibly one of the progenitors of the Freegan movement. Highly recommended reading – will change how you view waste.

Dumpster Diving Wikipedia Article
Is there anything Wikipedia doesn’t know? This is article’s funnily dry approach to Dumpster Diving has a lot of information, and even a few good links at the bottom.

I am now sitting in the Chance of Rain Cafe in the Hawthorne area of Portland. Minnie made it – the end of the trip!

On Tuesday I drove from Berkeley North along the California coast to Fort Bragg along Highway 101 to the 1 – one of my favorite roads in the world, and camped just North of Fort Bragg (where I glimpsed some harbor seal pups!).

On Wednesday, I drove further up to the Redwoods National and State Parks. Here I am standing next to the aptly named “Big Tree,” 1,500 years old and 30+ foot diameter trunk. The little speck in the bottom right is me. I’m smiling.

Thursday evening, I drove into Corvallis, OR, home of Oregon State University. I spoke with D.H., a chemical engineering professor who filled me in on all the amazing biofuels work going on in the area.

…and then this morning, I drove the last 1.5 hours to Portland to complete the trip. I’ll post more about Portland once I’ve actually met people, etc (and done some laundry!).

I’m currently in Eureka, CA headed up towards Portland. I’ll have photos and more details by Friday evening.

So today is the final day of testing – I woke up early so I could work on the final sets of analysis before heading off to the Pirate Fest.

So, what did I learn?

I regained respect for an old lesson: what isn’t known is often more important than what is known. Figuring out what you don’t know is a very difficult task.

Preliminary experimental conclusions:
I heated Canola oil at 75-85C for 5 days, the viscosity increased by approximately 5% — not terribly much, all things considered. The presence of metal tubes had no immediately noticeable effect on vegetable oil viscosity. All heated samples experienced an increased viscosity of about 5%.

I was surprised to note that the the oil exposed to stainless steel and aluminum took on a slightly darker color after 5 days. It should be noted, however, that the oil exposed to copper retained the same color as the control samples. I was surprised by the stainless steel, but the aluminum was something I expected. I also expected copper to cause a color change.

I haven’t completed the complete numerical analysis of the data, so it’s more than possible that I will be able to observe more trends as I start crunching numbers. I also have a few more samples to analyze – I’m especially interested to see what happens with the oil from my fuel tank.

I’m almost done with day 1 of testing. So far, I haven’t noticed any change in any of the samples. I’ve been heating and stirring them constantly at 65-75C. So far, there is no noticeable difference in viscosity or color.

The color was the most surprising thing for me – I expected to see huge changes like those photographed in the article I’m trying to investigate. Maybe after three days I’ll see something else.

Unfortunately, as I still don’t have a replacement digital camera, I can’t post photos until I get this roll of film developed (geeze I hope that these pictures come out – I forgot how completely terrifying analog film is – if the photos don’t turn out, I get zero visual data!).

We often joke that because of the deep fried smell of our exhaust, we are a rolling wave of obesity. It’s funny, but deep down, this car creates a dichotomy in my beliefs.

Why, you ask? Well, Minnie uses vegetable oil for fuel. On one hand, this is great because she and cars like her are not dependent on foreign sources for petroleum. However, on the other hand, we are using waste vegetable oil from restaurants that fry their foods.

My internal struggle arises because I am a professional proponent of preventive health measures such as eating healthily. It is my job to advise people to avoid eating fried foods because greasy foods lead to problems such as high blood pressure and obesity, and many associated complications.

A friend suggested that I hand out the book, “Fast Food Nation” as we drive to counter-balance our deep-fried message and smell. …which leads to another problem: if I were wildly successful and everyone stopped eating fried foods, where would I get waste vegetable oil fuel for Minnie?

Here’s the deal: for a while now, I’ve been hearing rumors and discussion about how bad the copper heating tubes in my vegetable oil tank are for the car – supposedly, they cause polymerization and oxidation of the oil, possibly causing damage to engines. This worries me, but I haven’t been able to find any proof. I searched scientific literature to no avail.

After looking around, I found this discussion by a Mr. Joe Beatty that addresses these claims (this discussion can be found on this page ). The problem is, I don’t completely agree with some conclusions drawn by the author, and in some cases, he doesn’t present enough data to make any conclusions – especially when addressing his most worrisome claim – that copper causes viscosity to rise – so I have no idea I agree with his conclusions or not.

My take on Beatty’s work:
First, the author heats up vegetable oil to 70C in the presence of copper and observes that the oil’s peroxide number increases, and then, decreases such that by the end of the experiment, the sample exposed to copper is less oxidized than the control sample. The author states that this experiment illustrates the how much the copper oxidizes the vegetable oil. If anything, this data shows a protective effect!

The next few experiments deal with free fatty acids, are presented without adequate control, and don’t seem to be much of a problem, so I will not comment on the author’s conclusions.

The final section is where I believe the meat of the problem lies. The author theorizes that oxidation reactions cause the vegetable oil to polymerize. He further observes an increased viscosity in oil exposed to copper and heat over time. However, he does not present his data with a control – it is possible that simply heating oil in the presence of air causes the viscosity to increase. After reading this discussion, I still don’t know if exposure to copper will cause the viscosity of oil to increase.

The author concludes by again theorizing that the oxidation of the vegetable oil may be causing a polymerization to occur. Whether or not I agree with this theory, it seems like a somewhat large leap to take, given the volume of data presented.

Let’s address the possible issues:
Oxidation: oxidation alone doesn’t really worry me. I’m burning this oil, not cooking with it. If it goes rancid (another descriptor for oxidized oil), what do I care? What’s another term for burning? Rapid oxidation. If the oil is slightly oxidized before it reaches the injector, I don’t much care.

Polymerization: If the oil polymerizes when exposed to copper, that worries me a lot. Even if a material polymerizes slightly, the viscosity will rise rapidly. Polymerization is certainly possible: copper is a reactive surface, and it certainly might cause some random reaction to happen. Since I don’t know what reactions might be happening, and viscosity reacts strongly when polymerization occurs, I will focus on viscosity.

Viscosity: This is the issue I’m most worried about. Does the viscosity of vegetable oil go up when exposed to copper and heat? The author hasn’t done a good job of convincing me either way.

Heat: I suspect that the real culprit here is heat, not copper. Heat often triggers all kinds of reactions – including polymerization and oxidation.

Metals: Metals may play a role as a catalyst in this situation, and copper is a relatively reactive metal. However, given copper’s superior heat transfer capabilities, ease of manufacturing, and affordability, it is worth investigating further to discover what reaction vegetable oil has when exposed to it before shunning it altogether.

My solution:
I have an idea for an experiment – I’m going to heat up some oil samples both with and without copper present, and with some other common tank materials (aluminum and stainless steel). I will then measure the viscosity using the tried and true Ubbelodhe type capillary viscometer. I like it because it provides completely reproducible results and is a beautifully simple device design. Heck, it’s all glass, so you can immediately see if something is wrong. I’m also going to make sure that I have as many controls as possible. Experiments without proper control groups don’t illustrate anything.

Samples:
Control1
Expose to air; Measure before heating, after heating for 1 day, 3 days, 5 days.

Control2
Expose to air; measure after 5 days

Copper1
Expose to air; Measure after heating for 1 day, 3 days, 5 days

Copper2
Don’t heat; Expose to air; measure after 5 days

Steel1
Expose to air; Measure after heating for 1 day, 3 days, 5 days

Steel2
Don’t heat; Expose to air; measure after 5 days

Aluminum1
Expose to air; Measure after heating for 1 day, 3 days, 5 days

Aluminum2
Don’t heat; Expose to air; measure after 5 days

WVO1
Measure filtered WVO from a storage tank

WVO2
Measure WVO from my vegetable oil fuel tank (my tank contains copper heating coils)

Note1: all oil samples will be 100% Canola oil, unless otherwise noted

Note2: all metal samples are samples of tubing, similar to the tubing used in tank heating coil construction, for more realistic testing on the bench top.

I will begin experimentation on Monday. When completed, I intend to publish my results on this website, on vegoil.us, and I will also attempt to publish in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

If you would like to help fund me while I perform this research, I would greatly appreciate it.

I posted this and this to the SF bay Craigslist…

On June 19, I’m planning on taking roughly 4 days to drive from the San Francisco Bay area to the Portland Metro area. Since my usual partner in crime is in Indiana, I will have a spare seat in the car.

Thus, I have a unique opportunity for some adventuresome soul: take three to four days to drive along the Pacific coast in a carbon-neutral vehicle, filming interviews along the way.

If you’re new to the Vegetable Oil Road Trip project, see here and here to see what we’ve been up to – or just poke around this blog and website so you understand what you’re getting yourself into.

The itinerary (as best as I can figure it, all subject to change):
Day 1 (6/18-ish)
Leave from Berkeley
Stop at the Sonoma County Biofuels Co-Op for refueling and interviews
Stop at the Yokayo biodiesel plant for refueling and interviews
Camp in the Fort Bragg area for the night

Day 2
Drive to Humboldt State University for interviews
Camp at Redwood National Forest for the night

Day 3
Stop in Corvallis, OR

Day 4
Interviews, refueling, etc in Corvallis in the morning.
Drive to Portland

The path looks something like this.

Requirements for the person I pick up:

• Someone that won’t completely annoy me after Day 1.
• Good conversation skills.
• Be fairly liberal – and I don’t necessarily mean that in the political sense, I mean that in the have an open mind and a broad background sense.

Money issues:
This will cost you $80 (that’s about half of what fuel would cost for this trip) + your half of food, snacks, camping fees, incidentals, etc.

Food issues:
I’m an omnivore. If you’re vegetarian, I’m willing to make reasonable concessions to help you keep your (admittedly more environmentally friendly) diet, but we’re driving through some relatively out of the way areas – I don’t know what we’ll find.

Storage issues:
The trunk is entirely taken up by fuel. You’ll get about half of the back seat. pack light.

Contact me if any of this sounds like your cup of tea.