Sat, May 17 2008
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Published April 22, 2008 01:22 pm - Merrimack College isn't known for breakthrough science discoveries but the head of the school's maintenance department has cooked up an odd mix to save money on diesel fuel. College beating record fuel prices with vegetable oil By Drake Lucas THE EAGLE-TRIBUNE (NORTH ANDOVER, Mass.) NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — Rrecord fuel prices got you down? Can't figure out how to cut costs? Take a green lesson from Merrimack College. The small liberal arts school north of Boston has cooked up a new way to cut expenses by blending cooked vegetable oil with diesel fuel to power 25 of its diesel-dependent maintenance vehicles and machines, ranging from lawn mowers to a dump truck. Bob Coppola, the college's director of physical plant, estimated the oddball mix will save about $10,000 a year in fuel costs. An added benefit, he said, is a trace of french fry scent emitted by the vehicles across the campus. "There's no downside," Coppola said. "We save dollars and reduce our carbon footprint." Coppola said the idea came to him when he saw a Discovery Channel show about using vegetable oil for fuel. That led to an Internet search and more information about the possibility of blending it with diesel fuel. Two months of trial and error led to the winning formula of 80 percent diesel fuel and 20 percent used vegetable oil. He also learned that the vehicles had to be kept warm in a garage in the winter because vegetable oil is thicker than diesel fuel and thus solidfies when cold. Coppola said the cooked vegetable oil comes from the college's cafeteria, which uses 1,200 gallons per year. It is filtered numerous times to remove flour, batter and other cooking elements before it goes into a tank for heating to 120 degrees. Then it is transferred to another tank, where the diesel fuel is added and made ready for pumping into the various vehicles. Coppola said the low-cost fuel idea gave his department something new to concentrate on -- a college experiment outside of the science labs. 
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