Why dig up dino-diesel when you can grow your own fuel in your back yard? One of Sustainable Harvest Honduras' newest innovations will be the production, use and promotion of biodiesel. The fuel will be made using mostly plants cultivated by families participating in SHI's programs and supplemented with waste oil from local restaurants. In many cases, this used oil would be thrown out into the watersheds or buried in the soil contaminating the natural resources and causing larger problems.

Biodiesel in simple terms is fuel made of vegetable oil. Local crops high in oil content such as oil palm, sunflower, coconut and peanuts (canola and soybean in more temperate climates) can be harvested, pressed, and made into an efficient, low cost, and sustainable alternative to petroleum based fuels. Animal fats and even used cooking oil from restaurant fryers can be recycled into fuel.

It's not a new idea; the original diesel engine ran on pure peanut oil. Because of alterations to the diesel engine over the years, pure oils are too viscous, or thick, to flow properly in the engine. Engines can be converted to accommodate the oils. The necessary materials may be difficult to find and expensive in some parts of the world. Alternately, the oils can go through a fairly simple chemical process called transesterification to be compatible with any diesel engine.

Transesterification is the process of separating the transfatty acids called triglycerides that make up oils, into glycerin and ester chains. A few common chemicals and supplies are all it takes to make your own fuel. Lye is commonly used as a catalyst in the reaction to break apart the triglyceride bonds. The ester chains can then bond with an alcohol (provided by methanol) and it becomes biodiesel. The glycerin settles out and the fuel can be siphoned off the top. This process makes the end product the proper viscosity to run in any diesel engine. The glycerin is a handy by-product used to make soap, herbal extracts, lotions and other items. For the more industrious, ethanol, or grain alcohol, can be substituted for fossil fuel based methanol. These can be brewed at home from local crops and lye can be made from wood ash.

SHI Honduras plans to produce and use at least 500 gallons of biodiesel in 2006, to be used in the program vehicle and other equipment. Fifty people will be trained in the production and use of biodiesel and families will begin to grow the crops used in the production of biodiesel, to generate a new form of income.

Vegetable oils, like petroleum, are made up of hydrocarbons. When burned, carbon dioxide, water and other impurities are released. Unlike petroleum, biodiesel does not add substantially to the net amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, carbon is cycled from oil crop to fuel combustion back to oil crop with only small amounts of energy required in the production of the biodiesel and its ingredients.

Biodiesel is a more efficient and cleaner burning fuel. Although emissions are similar, biodiesel produces:

• No net increase in carbon dioxide
• 100% less sulfur dioxide
• 10-50% less carbon monoxide
• 10-50% less hydrocarbons
• 40-60% less soot
• 13-97% less carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

To learn more about biodiesel, we recomend Joshua Tickell's book, From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank: the Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel and visiting the National Biodiesel Board's website, www.biodiesel.org

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