Portland, Ore. – When we began to plan the logistics of our cross-country road trip, we knew we needed a reliable car. But we also wanted to leave a light footprint – on the environment and our wallets.

We read that Oregon State chemical engineering professor David Hackleman recently made the trek to Virginia in an old pick-up truck using only biodiesel, so we called him up and asked for advice.

Dave drove the two hours up from Corvallis, Ore., to meet with us at Bridgeport, a local microbrewery that has recently decided to run its delivery truck on the used rice oil from its restaurant. We were joined by James Batdorff and Christopher Bates of Oregon State and Matt Sage of Bridgeport Brewing Company.

Included in our conversation is Dave’s explanation of emissions reductions, the difference between biodiesel and straight vegetable oil (SVO), and one reason why the biodiesel movement has been slow to grow, considering the first diesel engine ran on peanut oil nearly 100 years ago.

A bit of trivia: Bridgeport got involved with biodiesel and Hackleman only recently, when the brewmaster’s son wrote a high school report on the benefits of biofuels.

While on the road in our 2006 biodiesel Jeep Liberty, James and I will be able to recharge all our equipment and even record and edit audio using the jeep’s power. So far it is a little hard to grasp: Our blog is powered by vegetable oil!

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 | Email This Post

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