Ever since my friend said he was going to make his car run on grease, I’ve been curious, if not at times mildly obsessed, about the idea of energy made from renewable resources, especially waste. He had an old Landcruiser, and he said there was some kind of converter he could install in his already modified engine, a mechanism that would accept and use bacon grease as fuel. There was another guy, a mutual friend, who owned an 1970s-era diesel Mercedes sedan. He was going to do the same thing. Griesel, he called it.
They had plans. They would go around to all the restaurants on Dickson Street in Fayetteville and collect excess liquid fat that would otherwise be tossed in the trash or poured into a garbage disposal. Then they were going to do a few things to the raw material before introducing it to their machines, but that was the ultimate goal. Then, when that happened, they were going to drive their vehicles and never pay for petroleum gasoline ever again.
Last summer, my wife and I built a simple compost bin. Just some hardware wire wrapped around a few metal fence stakes. We’d been tossing our organics in the back yard – something I’d intuitively done for years, only because I couldn’t bring myself to throw watermelon rinds in the trash or grind up bits of apple core in a garbage disposal. I knew what composting was and what it could do, but I never seriously composted, and not for those reasons. I just didn’t want opossums and armadillos, not to mention our own dogs, dragging corncobs and pineapple crowns all over the backyard. But now that we have a system, albeit crude but much better than an amorphous, disheveled pile next to the fence, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood outside on the deck and marveled at the process of decomposition, all the incredible energy going into it.
“What’re you doing out there?” my wife will say.
“Nothing. Just watching a million gnats eat our spinach.”
So what does all this have to do with research writing? For me, it’s just another reminder that science is everywhere, explaining or illustrating everything we see, hear, feel and taste.
Because I was thinking about my (now beloved) compost bin and griesel buddies this week as I wrote a news release about research by Feng Wang, a U of A chemistry professor who received a $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation to examine roadblocks to harvesting energy from grass and common weeds. Okay, maybe it’s not plant or food waste, but it is, as he said, trying to make energy out of “plants that grow on marginal land and can be harvested repeatedly.”
A computational chemist, Wang is developing computer models of cellulose fibrils, which are microfibers of inert carbohydrates. The models will help scientists understand how these cellulose fibrils interact with water, alternative solvents and enzymes. Hopefully they will contribute to the design of catalysts for the pretreatment and hydrolysis of biomass taken from these plants. I think it’s cool – and it actually makes me kind of proud – that our nation’s top scientific government agency views this as an important endeavor.
So whatever happened to Griesel? Hang on, I’ll Google it… “A clean-burning alternative fuel made from the renewable resource of…” Hmm, this site says vegetable oil. Vegetable oil, grease, same thing, I guess. Anyway, it’s still around, but maybe I should have been dubious when my buddies mentioned their plans ten years ago. (Because I really wanted to believe that eventually we wouldn’t have to rely on fossil fuels for our cars anymore.) Judging from Google’s algorithms – the word “griesel” competes in popularity with the crest, or coat of arms, of a German family and the last name of a South African rugby player.
