Biodiesel Boats Bringing Smiles through GrowNextGen

by Matt Reese and Dale Minyo (Ohio's Country Journal) The folks with GrowNextGen are staying very busy this summer. On July 22 the 2022 GrowNextGen Tour stopped at the Crawford County Fair highlighting biodiesel and soy ink through fun, hands-on activities for children.

A perennial favorite is an activity where participants learn about biodiesel and, in the classroom, experiment with different oils to see what makes the best fuel. The fuels are then used to power small boats.

“The students really like the biodiesel boats. They’re really reactive and fun to watch putz around,” said Patrick Miller, a GrowNextGen ambassador. “They can relate that to the big tractors they see in the fields or even the diesel trucks they might see driving down the highway. It is fun to watch their faces light up as soon as their boat is put into the water. It is like they won the lottery, every time.”

Miller is a student at Ohio State University planning on being an agricultural education teacher and was excited to help implement the GrowNextGen program this summer at events around Ohio. He had experiences as a student at Anthony Wayne High School in Lucas County with GrowNextGen and was excited to work on the other side of the curriculum.

Kyla McCoy, from Wood County, is also a student at Ohio State. She is studying agrisicience education and has enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about teaching and agriculture through her work as a GrowNextGen ambassador.

Ohio Ag Net and Ohio’s Country Journal will be continuing the 2022 GrowNextGen Tour with at the following stops this year:

Excerpt from Racing Boats with Biodiesel: Beth Schoonover, Biology and Biotechnology teacher at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, attended the Ag Biotech Academy workshop and took what she learned to her classroom!

Schoonover said, “Preparing biodiesel fuels from used grease is a great example of how biotechnology can be used to solve some critical and timely environmental issues.” Her biotechnology students completed the biodiesel investigation using new and used plant oils.

Next, students completed tests in the investigation lab such as the density, cloud pint, pH, color, and odor of the fuel. Schoonover said, “Our best and most fun test was testing the fuels in the putt-putt boats. The boats worked wonderfully and the students had a blast racing them!” READ MORE

Excerpt from Making Biodiesel with Biotech Students: John Thomas is a GrowNextGen teacher leader who teaches at Fairbanks High School. He attended the Science of Food and Fuel workshop sponsored by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Here he talks about using the biodiesel lesson from the workshop in the classroom:

The students in my biotech class began by researching the process of making biodiesel and biofuels in general. They then applied this knowledge by heading to the lab to create their own biodiesel. This project stemmed from last summer’s Science of Food and Fuel workshop in which Rachel Sanders led us through the process of making biodiesel in the classroom.

The students used soybean oil, methanol, and KOH. The lab helped my students understand chemical changes such as transesterification, the chemical conversion process of triglycerides with alcohol into alkyl esters with the help of a catalyst. Special equipment such as separatory funnels and syringes helped us to extract and clean the biodiesel from its byproduct. We discussed the various byproducts that can be created such as glycerin and soap.

To top off the project, students used their biodiesel to power “putt putt boats” provided as part of the workshop supplies. We held biodiesel boat races to compare who made the purest fuel. Near the end of the boat races we pulled out some B99 biodiesel that I’d received from the conference. The students timed boats powered with both biofuels to see how much faster the boat was with B99.

My students enjoyed this project. They had a great time working in the lab and creating biodiesel, and they also enjoyed the competition aspect of the boat races. This led to great discussions about how to commercially make your product better and what they would do differently next time as they were extracting their biodiesel. In this, they did their own quality assurance analysis of their product!

As a teacher, I feel this project helped me involve my students in real world problem-based learning. READ MORE

Excerpt from Bringing the Power with Biofuel: Biodiesel from start to finish…. That’s what Kelly Lewis’s bioscience seniors worked on in their first full week back at school. Lewis teaches the Bioscience program for Eastland-Fairfield Career and Technical School at a satellite location in Gahanna-Jefferson High School. Her students went through the process of making and testing their own biodiesel.

Now they’re back, and with just a few months till graduation, they began with a week-long biofuel lab. The timeline: write the lab on Monday, prep the biofuel on Tuesday, wash it on Wednesday, and test the fuel in pop-pop boats on Friday. The following week, the students will be tasked with doing it again, this time using a non-soy oil. READ MORE