(Photo, left: Students conduct a series of chemical tests before the biodiesel conversion. Ana Tintocalis/KPBS .)
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Today in our KPBS radio series "A Matter of Degrees: Climate Change in San Diego," we visit the San Diego High Educational Complex in downtown. Students there are cooking up batches of biodiesel. It's part of an alternative energy program that may find its way into more San Diego public schools. KPBS Education Reporter Ana Tintocalis has this report. On the edge of campus at San Diego High, behind a garage door, there’s a loft. Inside is the school’s biodiesel kitchen. Beakers and containers filled with a familiar-looking golden liquid await the start of class.
Karanopolous: So what we’re doing today is check the used cooking oil that we’ve gotten from a cafeteria and see how many fatty acids are in it.
Mr. K, or Jon Karanopolous, is the energetic teacher who heads up the school’s biodiesel project. Every week, he and his students convert used cooking oil into biofuel. Mr. K says the whole process is rather simple. He says the toughest part is picking up vats of used cooking oil at the school cafeteria.
Karanopolous: It’s not the cleanest place because they’re taking a hot oil and putting it in a storage container. And its usually when you go pick it up, you wear a little jumpsuit, because its, you know, its kind of nasty.
Making biodiesel takes more effort than gassing up at your local gas station. Even so, more people are using it to power vehicles and industrial machines because less harmful to the environment. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded biodiesel reduces carbon dioxide emission by 78 percent compared to petroleum diesel. Biofuel offers the same gas mileage as regular diesel, and it can be used in most diesel engines. And you can brew it at home with supplies from Home Depot. Seventeen-year-old Eric Salcedo says he’s glad to be part of this biodiesel revolution.
Salcedo: It’s a great feeling to like know that you’re not doing it to be noticed, but just to make a difference, you know.
Eric wears a jumpsuit and goggles when he’s in the biodiesel kitchen. He and 60 other students are like amateur chemists. Their first step is to mix used vegetable oil with calculated amounts of methanol and lye. Then they pour the substances into a hand-crafted biodiesel processor. Mr. K is in charge of flipping the switch.
Right now we’re having the biodiesel being thrown into the top of the processor its flowing down through it, its mixing up, and we let this happen for about an hour and a half.
The machine is about six feet tall and has a number of pumps, tubes and tanks. Eighteen-year-old John Homes says in the end, biodiesel rises to the top, and a byproduct known as glycerin falls to the bottom.
Homes: The heavy stuff goes to the bottom and then we drain that out. Which is that thick product that you see right there. And then the light product is actually the biodiesel.
Which is then used to power four demonstration vehicles and the auto shop’s diesel generator. Later this year they hope to gas up the district’s food services trucks. Mr. K says the students can make up to 40 gallons of biodiesel every two to three days. And when the fuel burns, its smells a lot like french fries.
Karanopolous: It does! You’re a little bakery. But it’s neat! Regular diesel really can make you sick, when I was in Europe man that was just torture to me because driving around buses and the diesel…just not a good thing.
Seventeen-year-old Alex Mendoza sees that kind of pollution all the time in his neighborhood of Logan Heights. He says the community would benefit from clean energy.
Mendoza: Most people in Logan Heights they have asthma because of all of the pollution here. And, I have asthma, so maybe it would help a lot of people.
Mr. K says helping teens connect the dots is the project’s real mission. He says the promise of alternative energy don’t always reach his students, who mostly come from poor, immigrant families.
Karanopolous: They don’t have hybrids, and they’re not driving flex-fueled vehicles. So we’re giving them information that they might not have at home. San Diego High’s alternative energy program is the first of its kind in the county. A local company called New Leaf Biofuel and Miramar College fund it. District officials plan to offer the program at other public schools in the near future. Ana Tintocalis, KPBS News.
Photo (top right ): Junior Alex Mendoza measures the amount of used cooking oil. Ana Tintocalis/KPBS.)
