Visitors to the Statue of Liberty may not know it, but the monument's
elevator now runs on a new, biodegradable hydraulic fluid made from
soy oil.
Until recently, Lady Liberty's elevator used mineral oil formulations
derived from petroleum-based stocks. But the National Park Service (NPS),
which manages both Liberty and Ellis Island, has decided to "go
green," using products made from renewable sources that are less
polluting. In February 2002, NPS building and utilities foreman Jeff
Marrazzo contacted ARS chemist
Sevim Erhan about the feasibility of developing a biobased fluid for
use in the statue's elevator.
Erhan, at ARS's National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research
(NCAUR), Peoria, Illinois, recalls Marrazzo's specifications for such
a product: It had to readily break down in the environment in case of
a leak; it had to come from a renewable resource; the process for making
the biofluid had to be economical and nonpolluting; and it had to meet
all industry standards for safety and performance, such as for viscosity,
stability, and flame resistance.
It so happened that Erhan's group at NCAUR's Food and Industrial Oil
Research Unit already had the expertise and equipment in place for attempting
such a technological feat.
Erhan's first order of business was to examine the chemical structure
that gives mineral-oil-based hydraulic fluids their functional properties,
such as transferring energy in moving parts. Along with Atanu Adhvaryu,
a Pennsylvania State University postdoctorate scientist working at NCAUR,
Erhan then formulated a new elevator hydraulic fluid using soy oil and
tested it extensively to see that it had the necessary properties.
Though other vegetable oils will work, soy oil was chosen because of
its low cost, chemical versatility, and availability as a renewable,
home-grown resource, says Erhan. Second only to corn as America's most
widely grown crop, soy is the nation's leading source of food-grade
oil. Yet only 517 million pounds3 percent of the total supplyare
used for industrial purposes, according to the latest figures from Soy
Stats.
Agri-Lube, Inc., a Defiance, Ohio, firm collaborating with Erhan's
lab, scaled up production of the final biobased formula for testingfirst
by Otis Elevator using a 50-gallon sample, and then by Mazzarro at Liberty
Island using 1,000 gallons.
In both tests, the biofluid worked as well as or better than the mineral-oil-based
formulations, especially in terms of lubricity and biodegradability.
"We noticed the bioformula also had a higher flashpoint than the
mineral-oil-based fluids," says Agri-Lube owner Jack Stover, who
is negotiating licensing rights to commercialize ARS patents on the
hydraulic fluid and two vegetable-oil-based printing inks.
Erhan hopes innovations like these will spawn new market outlets for
soy and other oilseed crops while easing the reliance on petroleum and
its burden on the environment.
Perhaps it's fitting that the Statue of Liberty, her torch beaconing,
is the welcoming point for ushering in such new technologies.By
Jan Suszkiw,
Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Quality and Utilization of Agricultural
Products (#306), an ARS National Program described on the World Wide
Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
Sevim Z. Erhan is in
the USDA-ARS Food and Industrial Oil Research Unit, National
Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, 1815 North University
St., Peoria, IL 61604; phone (309) 681-6532, fax (309) 681-6340.
"Statue of Liberty Goes Green With Soy-Based Elevator Fluid"
was published in the October
2004 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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