Here's a solution to all your driving problems
Professor uses soybean oil to run car, promote biodiesel
Matt Gouras - Associated Press
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
Bismarck, N.D. --- With two rooftop tanks and a dashboard built to hold a computer and toggle switches, Dwight Baumann's car doesn't look like a regular 1984 Volvo diesel. And when it's running on soybean oil, it doesn't smell like one either.
Baumann pointed to the Volvo's exhaust pipe outside the state Capitol recently, inviting farmers and members of the state's Senate Agriculture Committee to take a whiff.
Farmers have an obvious interest in the bean-mobile --- they have a lock on the fuel.
''No, it doesn't smell like french fries,'' Baumann said. ''But no smoke, and it doesn't smell bad, either.''
Baumann, who is a native of Ashley, teaches engineering design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He converted his 1984 Volvo to run on the alternative oil to show farmers it can work.
North Dakota lawmakers are considering a tax break for biodiesel, a term used to describe diesel fuel that is blended with vegetable or animal fat oils.
Baumann wants the Legislature to approve the tax incentive, and he spent three days driving to Bismarck from Pittsburgh to show off his Volvo, which can run entirely on vegetable oil.
A frame on the car's roof holds two fuel tanks filled with vegetable oil. Baumann uses mostly soybean or sunflower oil, but even peanut oil will work, he said.
He starts the car on regular diesel, then switches to vegetable oil after it warms up enough to flow through the fuel lines.
The car goes just as fast on vegetable oil as it does on regular diesel fuel and gets the same mileage, he said. At 90 cents a gallon, vegetable oil is about 55 cents a gallon cheaper than diesel fuel sold in Bismarck.
But Baumann said it is sometimes difficult finding vegetable oil on long road trips, and he had to burn regular diesel for half of his journey from Pittsburgh.
The Agriculture Committee's chairman, Sen. Terry Wanzek (R-Cleveland), is a soybean farmer, but he said he's never seen someone use soybeans to power a car.
''But I truly believe there's a big potential to use soybeans this way commercially,'' he said.
Terry Goerger, a director of the North Dakota Soybean Council, said putting soybean oil in more fuel tanks will help the nation's energy situation.
''We hope the ag sector can be an energy source,'' he said. |
