Published on April 8, 2009

Tim Gustafson-Byrne holds up a container of transformed cooking oil that is on its way to being biodiesel fuel. The cloudy substance at the top of the jar will be usable in any diesel engine when the process is completed; the brown liquid at the bottom, once dried, is soap. Mr. Gustafson-Byrne, a teacher at North Country Career Center, wants to teach high school students and adults the conversion process, as part of a green industries technologies curriculum.  Photos by Joseph Gresser

NEWPORT — Tim Gustafson-Byrne is supposed to teach horticulture at North Country Career Center, and he does.  But his ambitions are too big to be contained by that term.  He has his sights set on a bigger goal, repairing our damaged planet.

Mr. Gustafson-Byrne’s business card lays out his mission clearly.  It introduces him as an instructor of green industry technologies.  The subject is not yet recognized by the state Department of Education, but if Mr. Gustafson-Bryne has his way, it will be sooner, rather than later.

On Friday afternoon Mr. Gustafson-Byrne explained his grand strategy and demonstrated a simple process that can change one waste product into two very useful items.

Mr. Gustafson-Byrne showed a visitor into the laboratory portion of his classroom, where an array of quart canning jars was spread out on the lab bench.  Reaching down he held up a five-gallon container of used cooking oil retrieved from the school’s culinary arts program, the feed stock for making biodiesel fuel.

“The only thing chef’s going to get back from this is an empty container and a bar of soap.  My kids are going to run this in a diesel tractor in the backyard.  There’s no waste,” Mr. Gustafson-Byrne said.

The jars represented the various stages in the production of biodiesel, he explained.  Right now he fits biodiesel production into his horticulture curriculum after he has taught his students the information required by state curriculum standards.

In the future Mr. Gustafson-Byrne hopes the Department of Education will accept his views and set requirements for a green industries technology program.

Eileen Illuzzi, the director of the career center’s adult education program, is helping Mr. Gustafson-Byrne toward his goal.  State standards don’t apply to adult courses, and Mr. Gustafson-Byrne can test out his ideas on interested adults.

Using grant money, Ms. Illuzzi has helped Mr. Gustafson-Byrne by buying a $3,500 outfit to process as much as 40 gallons of biodiesel a week.  His adult students will learn how to make the product in batches large enough to run a small farm or other diesel-powered enterprise.  His first biodiesel-making class for adults starts on April 15, Ms. Illuzzi said.

High school students, though, are working with the canning jars, under close supervision by Mr. Gustafson-Byrne.

The process is relatively safe, although it has to be carried out in a controlled environment and isn’t an activity that should be tried at home or by people who don’t fully understand what they are doing, he said.

Mr. Gustafson-Byrne explained that the first step is to measure the waste oil to determine how much of the chemicals that cause the separation to occur is needed.  Those chemicals are methyl alcohol, most commonly found in higher-priced gasoline antifreeze, and lye.

Both products are safe if handled correctly, but lye can cause severe burns if it comes in contact with skin, and methyl alcohol can cause breathing problems, Mr. Gustafson-Byrne said.  For this reason biodiesel production is too dangerous to try as a kitchen experiment.

Mr. Gustafson-Byrne said the two chemicals, when mixed, form a methoxide, which is also very caustic.  The methoxide, when stirred into the

The lab bench in Mr. Gustafson-Byrne’s classroom contains most of the equipment needed to make a small batch of biodiesel. At the left is fresh cooking oil, behind that, oil that has seen its share of french fries. A scale is used to measure out the proper amounts of the needed chemicals. The canning jars contain biodiesel, the cloudy liquid floating in the jar, at various levels of purity. At the far right is a jar of glycerin and near it a cake of soap, made by sun-drying the glycerin.

warmed cooking oil, causes it to separate, with the cloudy biodiesel floating atop a smaller amount of brownish glycerin.

The biodiesel is separated from the glycerin much as fat is scraped from the top of a soup.  After it is washed several times in water to remove impurities, it can be burned in any diesel engine.  The glycerin is set to dry in the sun and, when hardened, can be used as soap.

Mr. Gustafson-Byrne says the final product has very little odor and is safe to store.  Diesel fuel is designed to burn only under compression, unlike gasoline, which can be ignited easily once it is vaporized.

He said processing small batches of biodiesel fuel is more environmentally friendly than working on an industrial scale, because it doesn’t require the use of fossil fuels for power or transportation.

Mr. Gustafson-Byrne’s ambitions extend well beyond biodiesel.  A small electric vehicle is parked in a corner of his classroom, near an aquarium full of silvery tilapia.  The car is clearly in the process of being restored to operating condition.  Nearby a solar panel leans against a wall, ready to be installed on the roof of the electric car.

Eventually, Mr. Gustafson-Byrne says, he hopes to add solar and wind power to his green technologies curriculum.

“I tell my students my generation screwed the world up.  I’m trying to teach them how to unscrew it.”