Birdseed oil, salmon oil, palm oil, vegetable oil—these aren’t exactly the options you’d expect to see at your neighborhood gas pump, but for Utah’s Seth Warren, 28, and Tyler Bradt, 19, of Montana, it’s all they’ve needed to travel the 16,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina.
The grand adventure, the Oil + Water Project, was the brainchild of the two professional kayakers, whose endeavor is an impressive demonstration of the accessibility and the feasibility of biofuels. Throughout the entire trip, they have not used a single drop of petroleum to fuel their 15,000-pound rig.
Seth and Tyler converted a 1987 Toyota diesel fire truck into a biofuel-burning vehicle equipped with a pop-out tent and a compressor. They started the journey in Alaska and, over more than a year of continuous travel, made their way south through Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America—surfing and kayaking the coastline of the Pan-American Highway along the way.
To maximize the impact of the tour, the men learned Spanish and have focused on education as their primary objective. An onboard compressor and filters allow them to demonstrate how easy it is to convert local crops and resources into fuel.
“We focused really hard on technical high schools,” explains Tyler. “That is where we had the biggest impact. It’s really cool to stand in front of the next generation learning diesel mechanics and teach them how to use vegetable oil instead.”
Seth and Tyler aren’t stopping now. After finishing up in Argentina in April, they plan to launch five more educational journeys, starting with a U.S. tour.
Want to build a vehicle powered with biofuels like the Oil + Water rig? “It just takes a little motivation and some reading to get you on the road with biofuel in no time,” says Seth. “Google works wonders.”
For more information on the tour and to donate to the project, visit www.oilandwaterproject.org. —Mariko LeBaron
