Biodiesel team splits $20,000 grand prize at WSU competition
By Howard Buck
Published: May 31, 2010, 12:00am
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Heritage High School biodiesel program teacher Jim Neiman, center, with his team, clockwise from lower left, Zachary Schulling, Tyler Bradley, Joe Dejony and Scott Maxfield. The four students earned $5,000 each as grand prize winners at Washington State University's Imagine Tomorrow competition.
It’s called the Imagine Tomorrow competition.
Each spring, high school students head for the Washington State University campus in Pullman to pitch visionary solutions for today’s sticky science and engineering challenges.
An innovative biodiesel program at Heritage High School is very real, however. And clear-eyed experience, blended with far-reaching expansion plans, earned a team of four students a very real grand prize.
Try cold, hard cash — $5,000 apiece, no strings attached — for winners Tyler Bradley, 18, a senior; Joe Dejony, 17, a junior; and sophomores Scott Maxfield, 15, and Zachary Schulling, 15.
That was only part of $41,000 won by seven Heritage teams that carried the school’s Energy Smart collaborative banner. They brought home the largest share of at least $100,000 in awards split among more than 30 schools (with all but the grand prize money going to school programs, not to individuals).
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This third annual trip was the most rewarding 743-mile journey yet for biodiesel instructor Jim Neiman and teaching colleagues and students.
“Our presentation is what made us win. We spent a lot of time on it, really put everything into detail,” said Maxfield, who plans to apply his prize to college civil engineering studies.
Projecting passion
Team members knew they had a good thing going, the way judges lingered at the exhibit and peppered them with questions, they said. Upbeat energy also likely won over their judges.
“They are looking at the passion these guys have for their projects,” Neiman said. “These guys do have passion.”
It comes easily since the Heritage biodiesel program is a well-oiled machine. It now counts six area restaurants that contribute used cooking grease students can break down chemically into clean-burning fuel. Josiah’s restaurant in Woodland is the latest to contribute.
The biodiesel team’s short-term goal is to fuel some Evergreen district school buses, perhaps even C-Tran buses. Steady upgrades in equipment and greater experience have pushed that target ever closer.
The grand prize exhibit paints a vastly expanded program. Heritage would directly supply local kitchens with higher-quality vegetable oil, hauling in a railroad car’s worth at a time. It would distribute 5-gallon jugs to kitchens and, in return, collect better “feedstock” for biodiesel material, Neiman explained.
Eateries could take tax credits for grease given to the nonprofit school group, too.
Already in motion
That’s all hypothetical, for now. But the larger Energy Smart curriculum at Heritage lives squarely in the present.
Already, a science class raises algae in a large tub for possible fuel use, and plans to build outdoor ponds to grow even more. This year, students have explored the process of pyrolosis, or “biochar,” which is careful burning of organic materials to create potent soil nutrients while capturing carbon.
The school has a garden bed composting program fed with food scraps and other waste. It’s part of a schoolwide conservation effort that includes more efficient heating and lighting. Neiman’s group also has obtained a seed press that can squeeze oil from canola, and perhaps soon, grape seeds supplied by local wineries, he said.
No wonder another Heritage team took WSU’s first-place prize in multidisciplinary collaboration and a second Timberwolves team won second in that category, for its pyrolosis exhibit.
“We’re actually doing these projects, instead of just imagining them,” Neiman said.
Two Camas High School squads took second and third places in a behavioral challenge category: the first proposed a “Children’s Books for Change” series; the second, reflective building roofs that would bring energy savings.
Like Maxfield, the other grand prize winners have plans for their cash.
Bradley, who plans to pursue flight training in the U.S. Air Force, will put some money into a pickup he’s buying, he said. Schulling has in mind buying some air-gun hobby materials and rugged work clothing, and will sock the rest away for college.
Dejony will buy his father (who is completing a website design program at Clark College) a nice graduation gift, add some new electronics and pad his college savings, too.
