Smartfuel Operations
SmartFuel operates through partnerships with schools, community organizations, local restaurants (our source for raw material), and bus companies to provide a competitively priced, renewable fuel as well as educational, health and environmental benefits.
SmartFuel provides the community with an appropriately sized processor, collection equipment and helps with all permitting and siting issues. SmartFuel helps develop training, curriculum and methods for student involvement. We help negotiate contracts for fuel sales and works with the community to certify the fuel for road use.
SmartFuel partners with schools to engage students. The SmartFuel program is flexible to allow varying levels of student involvement depending on interest and school needs. Each school starts with a curriculum that teaches students the background chemistry behind making biodiesel and shows the students how to make biodiesel in the classroom. Some schools' students will help collect oil. Other schools (like the Wissahickon Pilot Project) will build their own smaller processors and run mini-businesses.
Almost every community has restaurants, students and diesel-run fleets. SmartFuel aims to replicate its model in communities across the United States and internationally, providing the following benefits:
Reduce Dependence on Fossil Fuel
Biodiesel provides a need near-term, cost-competitive solutions for existing fleets. SmartFuel helps communities use a local waste product to create biodiesel, replacing existing petroleum diesel in existing fleets. No retrofitting needed. No new fleet capital. Each town that SmartFuel works with helps reduce United States' reliance on foreign oil and improves energy security.
Improve Air Quality and Reduce Global Warming Emissions
Biodiesel—a vegetable oil-based fuel—provides a solution for emissions from the diesel vehicles. In 2003, the United States burned over 37 billion gallons of diesel fuel alone. Mixing 20 percent biodiesel into petroleum diesel (B-20) decreases particulate matter by approximately 10 percent and carbon monoxide by approximately 11 percent . Biodiesel also reduces carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common greenhouse gas. The amount of CO2 emissions depends on where the vegetable oil comes from, but can be as much as 100% reduction for pure biodiesel (B-100). Some studies have shown a slight increase in nitrogen oxide (e.g., two percent increase for B-20), however others tests have shown NOx may decrease.
Education: Science and Confidence-Building
Students start with a jar of waste oil, add alcohol and a catalyst and end up with a fuel they put in their school bus. How does it happen? By the end of the program, they can tell you in detail. Students can explain how the catalyst breaks down the molecules of oil, which bind to the alcohol molecules and form biodiesel and glycerin. They know how to perform titrations to gauge the correct amount of potassium hydroxide needed to foster the reaction. They understand the upstream and downstream effects of fossil fuel and the improvements made by using biodiesel. Many classroom lessons come to life in a tangible process that they are a part of.
Beyond the science lessons, the students also learn how to execute a project. They have the potential to be involved in all aspects of the operation, including creation of a business strategy, collection, production, and outreach. They can initiate additional ancillary projects, such as powering the system with renewable energy, or selling the carbon credits. SmartFuel will help them think through additional options. Through SmartFuel, students have the opportunity to reach their potential.
Strengthening Communities
SmartFuel engages an entire community to help improve their immediate environment and keep financial resources local. The operation involves partnerships between schools, restaurants, and local government. Restaurants traditionally pay companies to haul away their used oil now pay the local students or municipal center. Municipal governments that purchase fuel from large oil companies now buy a portion of their fuel from their own town.
SmartFuel also encourages local employment. Each facility needs people to collect the oil, clean the oil, and oversee the biodiesel production. These positions will be pulled as much as possible from the immediate area.