If the future goes as 17-year-old Lomar James plans, he won’t need to buy expensive gas%uFFFDhe’ll just make his own. James is one of several Al Raby School for Community and Environment students who, for the past semester, have harvested oil from algae t
On Friday, the students stood outside to send off a van filled with the biodiesel. Amid cheers, Al Raby chemistry teacher, David Levine, circled the block before taking an eight-mile trip from the West Side school to the Loop and back. Levine, who proposed the idea after reading about it being done at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the experience has been “a big boom.” “It really relates to their community because they all drive cars,” he said. The students were immediately interested when Levine proposed the idea of making their own gas. “I was excited because gas prices are so high,” said 17-year-old Shanicqua Landis. James just thought it sounded cool.
“I thought it was going to be fun because I had recently heard about biodiesel on the Discovery Channel,” he said. Levine ordered a species of algae that is indigenous to Saudia Arabia and contains a high oil content. The students cultivated it, multiplied it in photo-bioreactors and extracted oil. Their chemistry lab is full of flasks with green algae and photobioreactors bubbling with diluted algae solution. “Next (school year) we want to put everything on the roof, and just have hundreds of bags of photobioreactors,” said an enthusiastic Levine.
He added that the biodiesel could eventually fuel the school’s boiler and vans. East Garfield Park, where Al Raby is located, seems an unlikely place for advanced energy technology. The Garfield Park conservatory is right next door but the surrounding area, a low-income, predominantly Black neighborhood, is strewn with litter. Landis admitted that she used to contribute to it. “I never really thought about doing things to make my environment better. If I was walking down the street and eating a bag of chips, I would just throw the bag down,” she said. But she doesn’t litter anymore and wants to teach energy efficiency classes in her neighborhood. She said she realizes how shortsighted her view of the environment was.
“You have to have the environment in order to live and be able to buy stuff and pay your bills and everything. ‘Cause if you’re not living, then how you going to pay your bills in the first place?” she asked. James is excited about the potential of the eco-friendly biodiesel and hopes the government picks up on the idea. According to Levine, only a few privately invested companies are making biodiesel from algae. But he pointed out that it creates 1,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre, compared to ethanol, which only creates 60 to 120 gallons. The algae also consumes carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming.
“I wish that they could make the biodiesel immediately. I wish I could go to sleep and wake up tomorrow, and it be done,” James said. Levine and the students were able to produce the bio-fuel with the help of a $10,000 grant from BP.
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