While most people use vegetable oil for cooking their french
fries, some use it to power their cars.
On Thursday and Friday students stood in awe as a 60-foot
articulated city bus, driven solely on recycled vegetable oil,
rolled through campus.
Sporting a massive stereo system on the roof of what once was a
New York City bus along with a crew of 13 environmental advocates,
the “Santa Maria” made a lasting impression on
campus.
Sponsored by bigwords.com, a search engine that compares
textbook prices, the Santa Maria has currently traveled 800 miles
on vegetable oil on its “Eco Tour,” visiting Southern
California campuses to propose an alternative to gasoline.
The bus was invited to campus by three organizations ““
Environmental Bruins, California Student Sustainability Coalition
(CSSC) and Engineers Without Borders ““ to help publicize
environmental groups on campus.
“The bus has been a nice opportunity for visibility for
all the environmental groups. It’s a great draw,” said
Crystal Durham, a fifth year political science and environmental
studies student and a member of CSSC.
Although this bus is special for being one of the largest
vehicles of its kind, running diesel engines on vegetable oil has
been around for many years. In fact, when originally introduced by
Rudolph Diesel in 1892, the diesel engine was intended to run on
peanut oil, members of the group said.
Petroleum companies came up with another alternative ““
synthetic peanut oil ““ claiming it works better than
vegetable oil, said Randy Sherwood, the self-proclaimed helmsman of
the bus and a UC Santa Cruz graduate.
“The lubricating properties of vegetable oil are better
(than peanut oil). The main use of vegetable oil is for heavy
machinery and it doesn’t create carbon buildup,”
Sherwood said.
Not only does vegetable oil seem to be environmentally
conscientious as it produces 70 percent fewer greenhouse gases, it
is also more beneficial for public health, members said.
“Diesel oil causes cancer ““ you can bathe in
vegetable oil all day and you won’t die; maybe you will get a
few zits,” Sherwood added.
The 1978 bus was first bought by the group of environmentalists
on eBay without any notion of converting it to run on vegetable
oil. Soon after, the group decided to convert the bus to run on
vegetable oil and teamed up with bigwords.com.
Bigwords funded the conversion of the massive bus to run on
vegetable oil, said Matt Stimpson, the bus’s “first
mate,” who is better known as “Stimpy” to his
bus-mates.
The two groups teamed together to not only advocate for
alternatives to fuel but to also let students know about
alternatives for buying textbooks.
“We are promoting options and that’s how Eco (Tour)
and bigwords go hand in hand. Go online and save money on textbooks
““ there’s options. You don’t have to go to the
gas station ““ go to a restaurant,” Stimpson said,
adding that the group has been filling up its bus with recycled
vegetable oil from places like doughnut shops and Chinese
restaurants.
“We get it for free, and some people actually pay you to
take it,” Stimpson said.
After the Eco Tour, the group plans on establishing vegetable
oil filtration and fueling centers along Interstate 80 so people
can drive from coast to coast on vegetable oil, Sherwood said.
Any diesel engine can easily be converted to run on vegetable
oil while continuing to maintain the same power and gas mileage as
a diesel fuel-powered engine, Sherwood added.
Stimpson also said one of the advantages of using vegetable oil
is that the exhaust smells like the food that the oil was used to
cook. “You can put your head in the exhaust and smell
fries,” he said.
Though Sherwood said the conversion to vegetable oil is a simple
procedure that requires no new technology, he added he is unsure if
it will ever become widely used. He believes that this could be due
to the fact that not much money can be made in this business.
Regardless of whether or not diesel engines will run on
vegetable oil in the future, the group was greeted with a positive
response, and has already been invited back to several
campuses.
On its last night in Los Angeles, the fully furnished bus rolled
through the streets of Westwood Village and Venice, blasting music
while picking up people on the way.
The bus is now headed to Santa Cruz.