3/15/2006 11:24:00 AM CHS senior designs biodiesel processor
Chimacum High School senior Reid Zimmerman maintains a 3.996 grade point average as he designs his own home biodiesel processor and holds a job in the public works department of the City of Port Townsend. – Photo by Janet Huck
He rescued two big stainless steel soup kettles from the back of his dad’s garage. He salvaged valves and pumps from yachts that were being upgraded, and he absconded with a garden hose from his backyard.
With these mismatched spare parts, Chimacum High School senior Reid Zimmerman is creating his own home biodiesel processor to produce fuel for his Volkswagen Rabbit.
An independent thinker, Zimmerman, 17, has designed a biodiesel “cooker” that eliminates human contact with the necessary corrosive chemicals like lye that can burn and methanol that can cause blindness. At the same time, his innovative design also avoids mixing the dangerous ingredients inefficiently.
For instance, most home cookers use a simple mixing paddle, but Zimmerman realized the process needed more churning so he designed a swirling chamber that keeps the oil in constant motion. For raw materials, he hopes to convince Bloomers Landing restaurant in Port Hadlock to supply him with used vegetable oil from its French fry cooker.
Zimmerman’s creativity and ingenuity have drawn admiration from those who know and work with him.
”I’m impressed with his whole attitude and ability to research in a systematic way, looking at the pros and cons,” said Denny Justis, a partner at Townsend Bay Marine. “Other biodiesel processors just look at the recipe. He’s gone way beyond that.”
With a 3.996 grade point average, Zimmerman is likely to be named valedictorian at Chimacum High School even though he began taking Running Start classes at Peninsula College two years ago. His SAT scores are equally impressive, with 780 out of 800 in math, 720 in verbal and 720 in writing.
While he has been accepted at the University of Washington, he is still waiting to hear from University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University.
“I’m not an extremely smart person, but I work harder than anyone I know,” said a modest Zimmerman, whose goal is to become a structural engineer.
“Reid doesn’t get bored because a class is too easy,” said Todd Miller, Zimmerman’s sophomore-year physics teacher. “He’s interested in everything, and he keeps on creating and inventing.”
Last summer, the City of Port Townsend Public Works Department hired him as an engineering intern. Although the department usually takes only college students with engineering experience, the young high school student was so persistent and his résumé so impressive that City Engineer Dave Peterson decided to give him a chance.
Over the summer, Zimmerman documented most of the energy-efficiency quotients at the new Port Townsend City Hall, leading to a silver rating from the Leadership in Energy and Environment Design for new energy-efficient buildings. He also took on a project that involved delineating the wetlands at the intersection of Discovery and Rainier and surveyed a sewer at Hendricks Street.
Peterson was so impressed with Zimmerman’s work that he found some funds to keep him on staff during the school year for about 20 hours a week. Now the 17-year-old senior is designing a small stormwater line at Madison and Clay streets.
“I don’t know how he does all the things he does, carrying a full load at school, a part-time job and his extracurricular activities,” said Peterson. “He’s incredibly self-directed.”
An example of that sense of self-direction is how Zimmerman learned AutoCAD, a complex computer program used for developing architectural, mechanical and civil engineering designs.
To achieve certification in AutoCAD, a person generally needs about 120 hours of intensive training. But Zimmerman did it all by himself, with the help of a textbook borrowed from a county engineer.
When he’s not designing systems on AutoCAD, Zimmerman is playing a tenor saxophone in the Chimacum High School Jazz Band and congas in Rhythm Planet. The Marrowstone resident gets up at 5:30 a.m. so he can be at school in time for band practice.
The son of Fort Flagler State Park Manager Michael Zimmerman and Provisions co-owner Hope Borsato, Zimmerman first became interested in biodiesel while taking part in Rhythm Planet.
Drumming with Steve Corra, the Port Townsend Parks foreman who passed away early this year, Zimmerman learned about the fuel that Corra used in all his vehicles. With Corra’s inspiration, the high school student set up a community meeting on Marrowstone Island to convince residents to form a biodiesel buying cooperative. The meeting attracted attention, but most people hesitated to try using homemade fuel in their cars.
“In the end, only Reid and I were left,” said Justis, who attended the meeting and began mentoring Zimmerman.
Together, they started making plans to build a biodiesel processor.
Justis’ main role was scouting salvaged parts for the project. Zimmerman came up with an innovative design that uses a complicated valve and pump system to keep the dangerous chemicals away from human skin.
To produce biodiesel, Zimmerman plans to heat the French-fry oil in a double-boiler soup kettle, slowly introducing a mixture of methanol and lye. He’ll draw the mixture into a cooker with a centrifugal pump and mix it thoroughly for about an hour. Then he’ll siphon off the biodiesel on the top and filter it.
“There’s a controversy about filtering and washing the biodiesel,” said Zimmerman, who comes solidly down on the side of washing.
When Zimmerman finishes the biodiesel cooker, he’s hoping the resulting fuel will help him cut his driving costs so he can save more money for college.
(Contact staff writer Janet Huck at jhuck@ptleader.com.)
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