Fuel project looks to future

The Daily Home, Talladega, Ala.: Honda Manufacturing of Alabama’s new partnership with the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind is a positive move that should help boost a program focused on promoting more awareness of alternative fuels and student training.

Starting with an Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs grant two years ago, AIDB’s vocational program for adults at the E.H. Gentry Technical facility set up a small-scale program to reuse vegetable cooking oils as a fuel for diesel engines.

Called Project Green, the project was begun to help bridge the gap between alternative fuels research and public acceptance in using alternative fuels. AIDB was the first educational entity in the state to get involved in the project.

So far AIDB has mostly used oil from its own cafeterias; most restaurants in the area already had contracts for disposal of their oil before AIDB’s biodiesel program started. The goal is that Honda’s participation will give students more opportunities to process oil for use as a fuel.

So far AIDB’s program has involved 17 students. They’ve collected 3,022 gallons of waste vegetable oil and turned them into 2,300 gallons of biodiesel, used in AIDB engines. Three trucks have been using a 20 percent biodiesel mixture, a pressure washer uses a 60 percent mixture, and lawn tractors are operating with different mixes.

The Environmental Protection Agency says biodiesel is the first EPA-designated Advanced Biofuel to reach commercial-scale production nationwide.