FAIRBANKS -- Discarded restaurant frying oil, put through a process no more difficult than a high school chemistry experiment, can be used to heat buildings and fuel pickup trucks.
But there's a problem, at least in northern climates.
The cooking-oil-turned-biodiesel gels in freezing temperatures, leaving behind a nasty sludge that builds up in filters and tanks.
An Indiana outfit says it has solved that problem and is touting its product, Permaflo Biodiesel, in Alaska.
What the Indiana Soybean Alliance is selling, starting next winter, they hope, is a refining process that alters the chemical composition of biodiesel to prevent it from gelling in temperatures down to 60 below.
If the claim is true and the price is right, the product could transform the Fairbanks Biodiesel Cooperative into a year-round operation, cooperative vice president Garrison Collette said. The 3-year-old group more or less goes dormant during Fairbanks' long subarctic winter.
The technology also has the potential to help Fairbanks remove itself from the federal government's air-pollution watch list, Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker said. Biodiesel burns much cleaner than petroleum diesel fuel.
The soybean alliance arranged for a barge to transport some of the fuel from Seattle to Anchorage, and last week a group of scientists drove a pickup truck and a small bus borrowed from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, up the Parks Highway from Palmer using Permaflo Biodiesel.
On Saturday, the scientists drove to the Arctic Circle using Permaflo and ran a generator on the fuel.
The biodiesel demonstration was supposed to take place at Yellowstone National Park in January, but that endeavor fell through.
"At the last minute, they backed out," Purdue University's Bernie Tao, the lead scientist on the project, said in an interview after arriving in Fairbanks last week.
Tao said the biodiesel performed "perfectly" during the drive down the Parks Highway.
"It's darn cold up here," he said. "We had no problems running it. We're burning it at 100 percent."
The soybean alliance, made up of farmers, is looking for more uses for soybeans, a biofuel feedstock. But there are many potential feedstocks for biodiesel, including fish oil, which is being studied as a potential source of fuel in rural Alaska. These non-soybean sources of biodiesel also can be converted into the low-temperature fuel.
Collette said the biodiesel cooperative is doing its own study to learn how much waste vegetable oil is available from Fairbanks eateries to make biodiesel.
Members have looked into additives to keep the fuel from gelling in the cold, he said.
"So far we haven't found one that will work all the way down to 40 below," Collette said.
The cooperative produces biodiesel for its members, but Collette said the cooperative hopes to sell it someday. Using Permaflo technology would be a leap forward toward that goal.
"This is very interesting," Collette said in an e-mail after studying the soybean alliance's Web site and other Internet sources. "I think they are onto something here. I hope we can get a bit of this to sample."
A local pumping and thawing company uses biodiesel to heat some buildings, and a mechanic used it for a time to heat his shop until it became too much work, Collette said.
"The process of turning veggie oil into biodiesel is labor intensive and expensive," Collette said.
The biggest expense is methanol, which is shipped from Tacoma, Wash., he said.
Whitaker met with the scientists and representatives of the soybean alliance on Friday. The borough began running an air quality program after the Environmental Protection Agency deemed Fairbanks a non-attainment area, meaning the air quality falls below minimum standards.
Whitaker wants to encourage cold-weather testing in Fairbanks, he said, but he also is interested in biodiesel applications in Fairbanks as a means to improve the air quality.
"It looks very promising," the mayor said after the meeting. "Biofuel can be used in home heating systems with no conversion costs."
Megan Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the soybean alliance, said the organization is documenting the trip through Alaska and plans to use the information in promotional materials.
The alliance wants to sell its technology to biodiesel producers, she said. A price for the technology has not yet been set, but Kuhn said producers should be able to make Permaflo Biodiesel for a price comparable to what it costs to buy traditional diesel fuel at the pump.
"It won't be cheaper," the spokeswoman said.
By AMANDA BOHMAN
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner