A Big Green Bus
July 12th, 2005
A group of Dartmouth students bought an old school bus, converted it to run on waste vegetable oil, and now they are driving it around the country promoting alternative fuels. One interesting note is that, being ultimate frisbee players, they’ve decided to specifically target the ultimate community in their attempts to educate on the merits of biodiesel. Their website has a lot of good detail on the conversion process and their journal has some interesting stories such as being broken down in Moosejaw, Canada for a week.
Popularity: 1% [?]
July 12th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
The convert-old-bus-to-run-on-used-vegetable-oil idea seems to be pretty popular; Outward Bound stopped by in New Haven this past year with a similar thingy. They also had a climing wall, though… I raise you one climbing wall!
July 12th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
hey jeff~ what was that you were mentioning the other day about a bio-diesel program for trucks?
July 12th, 2005 at 11:58 pm
hmm, maybe i was talking about the fleet biodiesel station in New Haven?
but biodiesel is still kinda controversial, since a recent study indicated it takes more petroleum to produce than the resulting biofuel
check out worldchanging.com
July 13th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
perhaps a stupid question, but what does the bus ultimately emit?
July 14th, 2005 at 1:04 am
i think it emits fumes just like any other bus. Maybe they smell like french fries, though.
July 14th, 2005 at 8:48 am
I think that Jeff is right. The vegetable oil burns like other oils, just at a different temperature.
One interesting thing, however, is that vegetable oils are considered carbon neutral because any carbon dioxide emitted in the combustion was absorbed by the plant during its growing process and counterbalances the emitted CO2.
And it probably does smells like a good greasy restuarant. Maybe they should call it the Big Greasy Bus.
July 14th, 2005 at 9:19 am
Laura, remember John Mateer used to be called Big Dirty?
he could drive this bus…
May 18th, 2006 at 4:04 am
Sounds like a cool idea…i wish there wer more such interesting projects like these, since those would help enhance the awareness of greeners fuels such as biodiesel amongst the larger sections of the population…
I had also heard of similar projects being executed in other parts of the US & Europe
NS, Castor Oil