Researchers warm to soy blend

By JENNIFER CUTRARO

Photo by Tom Campbell

Part of Harry Gibson's research involves using these heating oils, blended with different amounts of soybean oil, to test the long-term viability of the mixtures. Gibson is a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue.

A team of researchers at Purdue recently refined a method for producing home heating oil from a mixture of soybean oil and conventional fuel oil.

This oil blend, called soybean heating oil, can be used in conventional furnaces without replacing existing equipment, says Harry Gibson, professor of agricultural and biological engineering and one of the developers of the process. Two Indiana homeowners started using soybean heating oil in their furnaces last winter, he says.

Soybean heating oil originated as a winning entry submitted by a team of Purdue undergraduates in the 2001 Soybean Utilization Contest and was further developed by Gibson and colleagues. The Purdue researchers have recently partnered with the Indiana Soybean Board to market this technology.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 8.1 million homes in the United States used fuel oil for heating in 2001, the last year for which figures are available. Of those homes, 6.3 million were in the Northeast, with the majority of the remaining homes in the Midwest.

Replacing just 20 percent of the fuel oil used in 2001 with soybean oil could have saved 1.3 billion gallons of fuel oil, Gibson says.

Adoption of soybean oil as an additive to petroleum-derived heating oil presents strategic, economic and environmental benefits, he says.

“Soybean oil is a renewable, domestic resource,” he says, and using soybeans as an additive in heating oil would be a boon to farmers, likely increasing the demand for their crops.

The addition of domestically produced soybean oil to fuel oil also could help buffer some petroleum price fluctuations, Gibson says.

Unlike standard fuel oil, soybean oil contains no sulfur, and blending soybean oil into standard heating oil decreases sulfur emissions, which is a major environmental benefit, says Bernie Tao, professor of agricultural and biological engineering.

Still another benefit of soybean heating oil is that it’s surprisingly easy to produce.

“Soybean oil comes straight out of the bean,” Tao says. “Producing the heating oil blend is a very straightforward process. We were surprised to find that nobody else is making this.”

Once the oil is removed from the bean, it goes through a process called degumming, which makes the oil more stable by removing certain compounds. Simply mixing degummed soybean oil with conventional fuel oil makes soybean heating oil, Tao says.

Soybean oil is comparably priced to standard fuel oil, says Nick Vanlaningham, a graduate student in agricultural and biological engineering who helped develop the soybean oil blend.

Over the last four heating seasons, the price of heating oil has ranged from $1 to $1.86 per gallon; over the same period, the price of soybean oil has ranged from 93 cents to $1.72 per gallon, he says.

“One of our goals is to make a product that runs well with the equipment people already have in their homes,” he says. “Homeowners would need to change much of the equipment in their furnaces in order for a 100 percent soybean oil to run well, but a 20 percent blend will run with the equipment they already have.”

To run a 20 percent blend, homeowners would need to have a technician adjust the furnace’s settings as part of a yearly service, Vanlaningham says.

Despite the advantages soybean heating oil offers, a significant obstacle to its widespread adoption remains.

“The infrastructure for mixing soybean heating oil is not in place yet,” Tao says. “But it could be easily put in place. The manufacturers of conventional fuel oil could mix soybean oil in at their facilities, or fuel oil distributors could mix it in on-site.”

Contact Gibson at gibson@ecn.purdue.edu

Tao at tao@purdue.edu

Vanlaningham at vanlannw@purdue.edu