A Cleaner Fuel, for a Brighter Future!

Overviews

 

How Stuff Works article on biodiesel, including links to explanations of how car engines and specifically diesel engines work. Clear and well presented, broken down into several illustrated pages.

Wikipedia article on biodiesel - talks about the history of diesel and biodiesel, issues with the use of biodiesel (including gelling at low temperatures), an overview of environmental benefits and production methods, and an overview of biodiesel's availability internationally.

Proposed/Overview of Biodiesel Curriculum

This is an Acrobat (PDF) file (214 KB) made from a PowerPoint presentation.

Created by Darby Brown, Ph.D., in association with Environmental Educators of North Carolina, this is a proposed curriculum and presentation covering a spectrum of biodiesel topics. It gives an overview of how oil gets into a seed, how many seeds are required to make a liter of oil (including an activity), and how to make biodiesel from oil (including a recipe/lab activity). It aims to integrate biology, chemistry, and physics with an experiential approach to teaching about biodiesel. Some of the concepts are fairly technical.

download presentation