WENATCHEE — Instead of fueling his truck at the gas station, Tim Bombaci is getting his fuel from his neighbors. His neighbors who own orchards, that is.
Over the past year, the Manson Middle School teacher developed and tested his own method of making ethanol out of apples that were slated
for burial.
Using a wood splitter, a washing machine and a still, Bombaci produced enough ethanol in his backyard to drive his 1990 Ford pickup in Manson’s Apple Blossom Parade in May.
His goal now is to fuel the truck entirely with ethanol for a full year or about 2,000 miles that he usually puts on the rig he uses as a farm truck. He also plans to enter it in Wenatchee’s Apple Blossom Parade next year, as well as Manson’s.
You’ll recognize his little blue Ranger by the Apple Powered logo on the door a picture of an apple with flames shooting out.
Bombaci said his first tank of gas cost him about $200 a gallon because of all the equipment he bought to make it. But now that he has all the machines and hoses and five-gallon buckets that he needs, all it takes to make his own fuel is a free bin of apples, a couple of cups of yeast, and enough electricity to keep a hot water heater going for a week.
That, plus about four hours of time gets him four gallons of pure, apple-grade ethanol.
It all started a few years ago, when Bombaci and a few friends were sitting around trying to figure out a use for all those cherries going to waste in orchards around Manson. There was a glut on the market, and some growers weren’t even picking them.
They talked about turning the wasted fruit into ethanol, which appealed to Bombaci on a few different levels. “There’s all kinds of reasons that this makes sense,” he said.
First, it creates a use for cherries, apple culls or other fruit that orchardists and packing houses can’t use. Eventually, if enough people want it, there would be a market for this waste, he said.
Second, compared to gasoline, ethanol releases very little carbon dioxide, so using it helps reduce greenhouse gases.
And third, the process is simple enough that anyone with a few thousand dollars to invest — or a few simple household machines can do it.
“I was initially trying to make it so anybody anywhere in the world could do this,” he said. That’s why he used a wood chipper and a washing machine.
Bombaci said serving on a statewide committee that set standards for environmental education two years ago helped inspire him to actually follow through on the idea of turning orchard waste into fuel.
“I think that geared my thinking toward sustainability,” he said. “It made me think about interacting with my world, and thinking locally.”
He initially hoped it would be a school project, but there were too many roadblocks such as putting a distillery on school property. Instead, he decided if Manson teachers want to use his project for their chemistry or business development classes, they’ll come to him.
Bombaci said the national discussion over use of ethanol includes both positive and negative consequences. He’d like to find out which are true for himself, and whether any of the obstacles can be overcome.
He noted that using fruit that would be otherwise wasted instead of corn already counters one of the biggest arguments against ethanol, because valuable cropland will not be turned over to ethanol production.
“Part of my goal is to open people’s eyes to what the possibilities are,” he said.
And while he may not develop his ideas into a business venture, he hopes one day to see local orchards selling their fruit culls to an ethanol production facility.
At the very least, he said, turning his 20-year-old pickup into an apple-burning vehicle seems worth a science experiment, especially if it leads to a new local industry, and a market for waste from one of the region’s oldest industries.
“This may not be the future, but I hope it’s pointing to the future,” he said.
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