Sloshing around a large barrel, the swirling black cooking oil smelled like rancid food. Though the waste would usually be discarded, some Washington State U. students are trying to find a way to turn it into fuel.

A recently formed group of students, the WSU Biodiesel Club, is collecting used cooking oil each week from local restaurants and dining halls to create biodiesel. Their aim is to sell the fuel to the university’s motor pool in large enough quantities to operate WSU machinery.

Biodiesel Club President David Smith, a WSU senior mechanical engineering major, said their goal is to manufacture 300 gallons of biodiesel each week. The club, which is not yet a Registered Student Organization, works in the Mechanical Engineering Lab off of College Avenue.

“For every gallon of used cooking oil, I’d say we will get about 85 to 90 percent biodiesel out of it,” he said. “That can vary with the quality of the oil and how well we mix our chemicals, however.” The club is part of a national push for environmentally friendly fuels. For example, the American biodiesel industry produced 682 million gallons of biodiesel in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The National Biodiesel Board has said the industry can produce more than 2 billion gallons annually.

Before the Biodiesel Club started collecting the oil, restaurants such as Basilio’s Italian Café in downtown Pullman would pay to dispose of it properly. Now, the WSU club collects the oil for free.

“We took about 40 gallons off their hands, and we both got a good deal out of it,” Smith said. “They want us to take the oil from them every week or so now.” Club Faculty Adviser Robert Richards, professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, said there has been strong support for the project across the university.

“Everybody wanted to see it happen,” he said.

Richards said students have spent almost three years planning, licensing and building to create a processor and gain university approval to start production.

“It was very challenging because, even though everyone in the university wanted to go forward, we’re working with the university context,” he said. “There were a lot of regulations and a lot of protocols that had to be respected.” Richards said there are significant fire hazards, waste issues and safety concerns that the students had to solve.

“A lot of thought has gone into safety and health issues,” he said.

The most difficult, time-consuming part of the process was safety inspections to receive the proper licenses, Smith said.

“It would have gone faster, but we had to get safety approval,” he said.

Richards thinks the biodiesel project will pay off in the end.

“It’s everything that I think sustainability should be,” he said. “It’s economically sustainable, it’s socially sustainable and it’s ecologically sustainable.” Meanwhile, Washington state is a leader in the move toward biofuels. A 2009 state law requires state-owned diesel-powered vehicles to use a minimum of 20 percent biodiesel. By 2015, legislators hope to upgrade this to 100 percent.

Back at WSU, Dennis Rovetto, director of Facilities Operations plant services, thinks the Biodiesel Club has the best method for producing fuel.

“It would be a very good thing if our loaders at the compost yard were running on the used kitchen oil from campus,” he said. “A waste product powering the machines that recycle other waste products – pretty great if that could happen!”