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Student scientists create biodiesel from soybean oil

A group of students from a charity science program is developing its own biodiesel fuel from soybean oil.
Biodiesel consists of mono alkyl esters produced from vegetable oils, animal or old cooking fats.
Soy biodiesel is made through a chemical process called transesterification whereby the glycerin is separated from the soybean oil. The process gives two products: methyl esters (the chemical name for biodiesel) and glycerin (used to make soap). The use of biodiesel in a conventional diesel engine results in substantial reduction of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and soot.
A group of Ecotek student scientists -- Chris Anderson, Keith Young, Jr. and Emmanuel Thomas Jefferson -- were so interested in the topic that they decided to make their own biodiesel from soybean oil.
They followed a stringent manufacturing and quality control process, such as breaking down the triglycerides in the oil and running combustion, chromatography, and viscosity tests on the methyl ester.
The knowledge that the team gathered from their work in the lab will help them when they travel to the United Nations in New York City to meet with world leaders to discuss the viability of biofuel on behalf of Chad. It will also help them when they share their research with attendees at the Michigan AgriEnergy Conference.
Officials say the team is also working on plans to convert switchgrass, algae and other cellulose based material to biofuel.
Ecotek is a program within the Motor City Model UN Club, a 501c3 organization. It is provides students ages 10 to 17 with the opportunity to work on science projects to help them better understand the role that science plays in policy making within international organizations such as the United Nations.
The students work on a diverse set of projects ranging from combating AIDS to protecting the environment. Once they have reviewed the UN treaties and have completed their lab research, the students meet with world leaders at the UN to share what they have learned.
To learn more about the program and the students highlighted in this press release, contact Keith Young at (313) 399-7893 or email him at keiyoung@ecotek-us.com
The students will show off their work to the public on Friday, March 6 from 4 to 7 p.m. at Ecotek Laboratories, located inside TechTown at 440 Burroughs St., Suite 511 in Detroit.
Note: For information on how you can sponsor content in the Blue Box, contact Jeff Lasser at (248) 455-7319 or jeff.lasser@cbsradio.com

A way to see and think about change in Madagascar

Think of Madagascar, it’s an Eden of rare life found no where else on Earth. Imagine yourself deep in the southern corner of the island with its magnificent coral reefs, geckos, chameleons, birds, lemurs and trees in the spiny baobab forest. Your family also lives here and is one of the 17 million Malagasy people living on less then 1$ per day. You live in a small isolated village, fishing or growing rice, corn, manioc, papaya and melons in the hot and very dry climate. Life is a struggle for survival and what you grow is just barely enough to feed yourself. Your only source of income is derived from selling fish, growing corn, or harvesting the trees you cut from the forest to produce charcoal. Your local natural resources are the only thing that keeps you and your family alive.

Given that this is the way your grandfathers lived and the isolation you experience, it is impossible for you or anyone in your community to imagine how life could be different; yet you still find a way to remain happy and optimistic, open to the world around you and any new opportunities that arise.

The real underlying problems are out of your hands, you are clueless and essentially helpless against global external pressures that dictate local markets which directly affect your community. You understand from the elders in the village that the fields are not as productive as they once were, rains come less often, it is hotter for longer portions of the year and the corals are dying. What you are ignorant of is the discrepancy in income you receive for the octopuses that you and your brothers harvested out of the sea, versus what people in Beijing are paying for them. Or that your greatest asset, the forest, is being cleared faster then anywhere else on Madagascar, just to be turned into corn that is fed to pigs on the touristy island of Mauritius. You have no idea what the price of charcoal is in the capital yet you still wake up every morning before dawn to work the entire day out in forest for one bowl of rice per day.

You are definitely unaware and could not possibly imagine the magnitude of the consequences of what it means that your forest is earmarked by multinational mining corporations. You have never seen a picture of an entire forest cleared, and it is unfathomable that a single machine could drain all the precious ground water out from under your feet. Yes this could happen and already is in other parts of Madagascar, just so the sands under the forest that your ancestors have lived off of for thousands of years, can be mined out and turned into LCD screens and whitening agents for linens and plastics, destined for China and North America. The saddest part is that you can’t stop it, because you have no education about these things and you don’t have other opportunities to do anything else so you don’t think about it.

As a result, you go about life as it is and keep harvesting your resources, and so do your neighbors and their growing families. Your entire community has a tremendous knowledge about the forest and its medicinal values. Your happiness and pride is derived from these natural connections to the land and sea. But you keep hearing from the elders, that the rising temperature and shorter rainy season is exacerbating the struggle for survival. No one really foresees that the local resources are very limited when continuously depleted and that they need thoughtful attention to be conserved and restored for future generations. These pressures have never existed before and no one has any new information about how to reverse unsustainable cycles, hence the need for intervention.

Inspired by the examples set by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ - New Latitude is implementing a similar approach to fundamentally empower the next generation. New Latitude will use existing resources and grow surplus vegetables, intercropped with thousands of locally propagated trees. To ensure the long-term viability of the project New Latitude will working with locals to create sustainable fair-trade livelihoods aimed at restoring and protecting natural environment for future generations.

New Latitude will mobilize participatory community initiatives by building local capacity and leadership to equip communities with new skills. This will be accomplished by introducing a program which offers tangible benefits through improving existing livelihoods schemes, self-motivated life-long learning opportunities, resulting in beneficial conservation alternatives for future sustainability of natural resources and biodiversity.
What been done
A feasibility analysis in the pilot phase of New Latitudes operations in SW Madagascar has determined that improvements to agro-ecological systems are emphatically supported by communities. By generating new economical alternatives and increasing food security from very basic improvements to food production methods (i.e. Composting) greatly reduced local resource over-exploitation. An example training center consisting of an efficient perma-culture garden with improved soil quality, no-till planting and drip irrigation system intercropped into a native and fruit nursery has been developed and will be expanded as an exemplary regional reforestation and livelihood improvement model.
Working together to be innovative
Sustainable opportunities, education and enterprise (offered via project hoavy) are far more appealing to rural communities then only being able to make a living from harvesting charcoal, being a farmer or a fishermen. Exchanging ideas is the next step to expand existing information networks and develop a training center consisting of a primary school and Spiny Forest research facility. We will recruit local leaders, i.e., villagers, University’s and professionals who will replicate this model and provide training and implementation in neighbor communities. Through this model, our project will propagate the exchange of information between communities and the establishment of further projects determined by the local community advisory committees.
Outreach
Frequent workshops will be held and a local radio broadcasting program will facilitate the exchange of experiences and knowledge and facilitate on-going recruitment of new members for community restoration and monitoring projects. Further training will be provided for eventual outlets to sustainable eco-tourism.

We anticipate that 80% of the population will be involved and will participate in the improved agro ecological scheme, e.g., nurseries, permaculture and native tree propagation and 40% will become successful local entrepreneurs by selling excess food in markets, educators, researchers and tour guides, improving their income by 60% in just 2 years. We expect to reach up to 10,000 local people of all ages and raise awareness about how global environmental issues affect SW Madagascar and how local people can develop resilient proactive ways to ensure self-sustainability. This will be successfully accomplished by creating community associations and organizations, that will be financially independed in the long-run through government, micro-finance and international funding sources.

This should show it all......

This is the logo for New Latitude our emerging non-profit* committed to mobilizing initiatives that actively promote community projects benefiting both people and the environment. This organization has hatched out of the grassroots project hoavy, which is based in Madagascar, where we are creating environmental and educational incentives to empower rural people and protect extremely rare and endangered biodiversity. New Latitude is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and we are pioneering a sister project here to promote community energy and food independence in the Midwest, through environmental advocacy based on safeguarding the Great Lakes. In the near future we hope to develop and incorporate a distance leaning portal linking Madagascar to Michigan. Both projects are in their 'seedling stages' so ideas, links or comments of how to build them up and connect these remarkable people and places is of course always welcome. Our website will be up very soon and we are already excepting tax exempt donations at http://ihcenter.org/groups/newlatitude.html so please spread the word.
*New Latitude- receives its tax exempt status as a project of the International Humanities Center- ihcenter.org