Merrimack Biodiesel Crew

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Merrimack Biodiesel Crew

Merrimack, United States
Team Contact: Desiree
Team Type: Youth Venture
Team Phase: Sustaining Venture

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About Us

Our mission statement is to raise awareness and use of carbon neutral alternative fuels, and promote energy conservation and recycling

Through the inspiration of William McDonough's Cradle to Cradle; Remaking the Way We Make Things and Al Gore's rousing Inconvenient Truth, Merrimack High School's AP Chemistry class initiated a team of students to instigate the use of alternative fuels and alternative energy. Utilizing waste vegetable oil to process into biodiesel fuel, we abide by our promotion to recycle. Using solar panels to operate our biodiesel processor, we encourage the advancement of clean energy alternatives. We build, processs, and consume our own biodiesel fuel to demonstrate the practicality of self sustainability. Finally, we educate, in hopes that immediate changes will be made so that future generations may live more amply in a well-balanced environment.

Interests

Business, Community Beautification, Education, Environment, Health, Peace and Non-Violence, School Community Development, Technology

More about us...

How does your group impact your community?

Our team uses waste vegetable oil that would otherwise end up in a landfill. The restaurants that we pick the oil up from save money from not having to have it hauled away. The air is cleaner for those exposed to our bus exhaust. In the long run, our community will benefit greatly from simple recycling and enery conservation techniques if they too initiate the habits.

Looking back we should have...

started ordering the parts to convert our processor to run on solar power a little bit earlier. We should have kept to our dealines a lot better. Finally, we should have had an individual designated to create a team website so that our processor blueprints are available to any school or organization interested in initiating a similar project.

Looking back we did a great job at...

beginning our building, and processing of biodiesel. This part of the project was very efficient. We have also done a great job improving the quality of our biodiesel. Today our fuel meets the ASTM standards.

What we really enjoy about being young changemakers is...

seeing results. We love to see that we are leaders to our peers, to our school and to our community. It is invigorating to be a part of the current movement for improving environmental conditions and knowing that anyone can make a difference. If you can dream it...you can do it!

What other youth networks are you involved in? What other websites do you belong to, other youth organizations, etc.?

We are also involved with the MIT Lemelson InvenTeams. Our team is working with the Biodiesel@MIT group to create a link on the home page of the National Biodiesel Board website to support various schools and institutes that are involved in the study and production of biodiesel.

3 Month Survey

Describe your recent Venture activities. What have you accomplished since selection?

In addition to continuing our biodiesel processing, we have started incorporating other sources of alternative energy into our project such as solar power. We have reseached and applied our reseach to raise the quality of our biodiesel to reach ASTM standards. We have presented to three other organizations including Southern New Hampshire's SESL, MIT, and Tufts University, as well as to local elementary, middle, and high school grade levels.

Have you faced any difficulties? Were you able to solve them? If so, how? If not, what would have been helpful to you?

One difficulty that we have faced is finding times for all members to meet to work on the project after school. As a result, we spread the work out through meeting several days and week and members could contribute on days that they were available. We also seperated the work into more concentrated topics so that the talents of individuals on the team could be used to utilized in the best way possible.

What upcoming plans do you have for your Venture? How will your Venture continue to benefit the community?

The Merrimack Biodiesel Bus is still in desperate need of a paint job. We also want our project to be more interactive when presenting to younger classes. We're thinking of incorporating remote control cars that either run on biodiesel or that are run on electric batteries that are charged with a generator run on biodiesel.

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Youth Venture

Merrimack Biodiesel Crew

Merrimack Biodiesel Crew

About Us

Interests

How does your group impact your community?

Looking back we should have...

Looking back we did a great job at...

What we really enjoy about being young changemakers is...

What other youth networks are you involved in? What other websites do you belong to, other youth organizations, etc.?

3 Month Survey

Describe your recent Venture activities. What have you accomplished since selection?

Have you faced any difficulties? Were you able to solve them? If so, how? If not, what would have been helpful to you?

What upcoming plans do you have for your Venture? How will your Venture continue to benefit the community?

How would you like to continue your involvement with Youth Venture?

Members

Team Content

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