A new environmentally-friendly technology developed at the University of Northern Iowa will be featured tonight on a popular television program on the History Channel. U.N.I. researchers, including Lou Honary, worked with a northeast Iowa company to make bio-based grease using a microwave.
Honary says if the process catches on nationwide, it will change the way lubricants are made. When the History Channel heard about this, they came to the manufacturing center in Grundy Center and filmed us making grease using a microwave and of course, soybean based grease,” Honary said.
Many soy-based automotive lubricants are already available in big box stores like Lowes and Car Quest. “The products are coming out of Iowa and going into all these stores and people see those, but if they learn more about it, the benefits of it and where it’s coming from, then I think they’ll be more willing to purchase those,” Honary said.
U.N.I.’s National Ag Based Lubricant (NABL) research facility has been in operation for nearly 20 years. The History Channel program Modern Marvels will feature a segment on the work at U.N.I. tonight at 8 o’clock.