A green bus bound for nowhere
Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008
Members of the Chemistry Club at Parkview Magnet High School raised money this year to purchase a 35-seat school bus that won’t take them anywhere — they’re more concerned with the journey than the destination or lack thereof.
The students converted the bus to run on a blend of biofuel and ultra-low sulfur diesel just to show how easily it can be done.
The point, club President Kundan Das said, was to make “the most environmentally friendly bus that we can.” The bus is parked in the rear of the school, where students work on it after school and on weekends. Recently, a half dozen students gathered around a large box that they’d been waiting for weeks to arrive.
Das pulled out what looked like an oversized muffler: a diesel oxidation catalyst.
The device will be attached to the exhaust system to reduce hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitric oxide emissions. The pollutants contribute to public respiratory health problems, according to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. They also contribute to ozone formation, acid rain and climate change, according to the agency.
Das climbed through the back door of the bus to start it up. He wanted to run the last of the old diesel out of the engine.
A blue-gray cloud blew out of the tailpipe. Kayla Sandage, Holly Delclose and Waltin Zomaya coughed and moved away from a folding table at which they were working.
The 12-year-old vehicle was a good candidate for a retrofit, Das said after hopping out and seeing the exhaust.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
Das, a senior, wants to be a cardiovascular surgeon. He started the chemistry club in 2005, and it has about two dozen active members. This year, since he’d already taken organic chemistry, qualitative analysis and other advanced courses, Das had more time to devote to a big project.
The first semester was spent raising money, doing research and making about five liters of biodiesel from used vegetable oil.
They’ll combine that biodiesel with ultra-low sulfur diesel for the bus. The biodiesel blend can be used in an unmodified diesel engine and has fewer nitric oxide emissions than 100 percent biodiesel.
If the bus were run on pure biodiesel, it would have needed an extra storage tank and heated fuel line because pure biodiesel is more viscous than regular diesel, Das said.
The club raised nearly $ 5, 000 from pizza and T-shirt sales and donations from Colson Oil, the Arkansas Sustainability Network, the Arkansas Times and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
They purchased the $ 750 vehicle from First Student, a student busing company. They spent $ 530 more to have it driven from Missouri.
The members sanded down the yellow paint and began painting the bus black with dark-blue swooshes along the sides. They plan to add the club’s logos and tint the windows to keep the interior cool. They’ll also install a Spiracle crankcase exhaust-purification system to further reduce emissions.
At year’s end, they’ll hand it over to the Little Rock School District, which will keep it to transport Parkview clubs and students for special trips, Das said.
Das is the driver of the bus conversion project.
“He basically wants to change the world and to show that high school students can do it,” said Jasmine Dobbins, a senior who wants to eventually work for the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Converting one bus to run on biofuel may not make a large impact on reducing greenhouse gases, Das said, but organizing students to undertake the project is significant in itself.
“As a school and as a student body, we were able to pull something off that is applicable to the real world,” he said. “That’s what makes it impressive — and it was done without help from adults, except for supervision.” A Parkview assistant principal, Dexter Booth, helped keep the project running.
“Doing this project at a school involves a lot of rules and regulations,” Das said. “He really made this possible.” The club plans to display the bus at the Earth Day Festival on Saturday at the Clinton Presidential Center.
They’ll have to have the school district tow the bus because it isn’t yet insured.
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