Earth Day heroes: Paul Miller and Sustainable Systems are definitely "On the Bio Bus"

Paul Miller is the chemist behind the nontoxic, relatively nonpolluting fuel that powers the University of Montana’s BioBus. His secret ingredient: waste vegetable oil from UM’s Food Services.

Business owner, chemist cooked up a plan that produces clean, nontoxic fuel called biodiesel that is being used in UM’s BioBus

By GWEN LANKFORD for the Missoulian

When you start a new business, success is never guaranteed. It takes a good business plan. It takes persistence. It takes faith. And for Paul Miller, founder of Sustainable Systems LLC, it takes deep-fried foods.

In fact, without waste vegetable oil from the University of Montana’s Food Services, Miller’s company – which does business as Montana Biodiesel – may never have gotten off the ground.

Instead, the Missoula-based company is just getting warmed up after only two years of business.

Montana Biodiesel picks up UM’s waste oil and turns it into biodiesel – a fuel interchangeable with diesel – through a process called transesterification. That’s where the waste vegetable oil is mixed with methanol and a catalyst of sodium hydroxide to form a clean, nontoxic fuel.

Dressed for one of the first warm days of spring in light-colored khaki pants and a plaid shirt, Miller’s modest voice reveals a gentle Southern accent as he speaks.

"It’s where industry is headed," he says. He’s just fired up his white Dodge diesel truck en route to his small biodiesel processing plant on Missoula’s west side. His truck runs on a blend of regular and biodiesel.

"From a chemistry background and looking at industrial processes, where are you going to go?" he explains. "Resource extraction or a renewable route?"

So far, one of the best routes Miller has come across is a UM park-and-ride shuttle service called the BioBus. It’s a pilot project using mid-size commuter buses fueled with biodiesel that Miller produces.

Last year, the BioBus boasted exactly 68,132 riders, traveling either to or from Dornblaser Field and the UM campus. Considering that each ride is about 1.5 miles, that’s 102,198 miles traveled by bus rather than by fossil-fuel-burning cars, trucks or SUVs.

Nancy McKiddy, director of UM’s Office of Transportation, says that’s the beauty of the BioBus. Biodiesel can be used in regular diesel engines. And not only is biodiesel renewable and manufactured without toxic chemicals, but it reduces sulfur dioxide emissions by 100 percent, hydrcarbons by 93 percent and carbon dioxide by 78 percent.

Using biodiesel in place of petroleum has the power to significantly impact air quality – and that’s important in a narrow mountain valley with a booming population.

"Its uniqueness is what people are interested in," says McKiddy. "Once we introduced biofuel, we had an increase of 100 to 150 new passengers daily on the BioBus. I do credit the fuel for part of that. It became more environmentally friendly."

Biodiesel, though, is only one product that Miller says can be made from renewable crude materials such as those extracted from the seeds of safflower, mustard, canola and sunflower. Miller works with these oils, in addition to the old fryer grease, to make lubricants as well.

It’s only the beginning.

Not only does the 28-year-old Miller run a business, but he is also a graduate student in UM’s Chemistry Department immersed in cutting-edge research that will make these other uses possible. The most fascinating research, Miller says, includes using bacterial "green" chemistry.

In green chemistry, only nontoxic renewable resources are used to make nontoxic renewable products using nontoxic chemical processes.

One common product that Miller hopes to eventually produce is glycerine. With more than 1,000 uses, glycerine would make farmers’ oil crops even more valuable.

Chemistry professor Garon Smith says his student is an exception to the rule.

"He is really interested in devoting his energies to projects that are sustainable and earth-friendly," Smith says. "He took his graduate research program and started a company based on that work. That’s not something I’ve had happen before."

It isn’t easy. On an average day, Miller’s life is a complex juggling act – taking him from hands-on research in the lab to a business call on his cell phone, back to a chemical equation that might yield the next breakthrough in the renewable fuels industry.

Growing up on a small ranch in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Miller says his dad was always a strong example of what a person can achieve if he works hard. Instead of relying on chemicals for fertilizer, the Miller family always composted.

They grew vegetables. They nurtured fruit trees. They’d collect walnuts from a nearby grove and plant them on their property. They’d take willow cuttings and root them out in 5-gallon buckets until they were large enough to replant.

"His husbandry to the land and his connection to the soil, later on in my life, I saw the importance of that," says Miller. "I realized the importance of agricultural diversity in farming operations and how it benefits the land."

Keeping that passion for the land in mind, and focusing on all the diverse possibilities emerging from the nascent biodiesel fuel market, Miller hopes the hard work will pay off this fall when his company breaks ground on a new biodiesel refinery in north-central Montana.

The refinery will be the first in the northwestern United States. And unlike other refineries that are scattered around the country, Miller says his operation will be based on the use of green chemistry to produce a greater variety of products such as fuels, lubricants and possibly glycerols.

But most importantly to Miller, by using local materials grown by local farmers and processing nontoxic fuels and products, the refinery will boost the regional economy. It will be a sustainable system.

"We can’t underestimate the opportunity our existing biological communities present to us," he says. "Learning as I go, inherently I want to do the right thing."

Gwen Lankford is a graduate student at the University of Montana School of Journalism.

http://missoulian.com/articles/2003/04/24/outdoors/od03.txt