Students cook up biofuel future

Waste cooking oil from Waiheke restaurants is helping to power a diesel engine at Auckland University, in a project that could give the island its own biofuel by next year.

Three students have been testing a 500cc single-cylinder Lister engine using a blend of cooking oil and diesel.

The joint project involves the Waiheke Waste Resource Trust and Auckland University.

The engine uses slightly more of the 50/50 oil and diesel blend than conventional diesel for the same power output. But, more importantly, initial tests showed it emitted fewer atmosphere-polluting gases.

Amelia Rentzios, 22, said the high cost of petrol and the emission of greenhouse gases by diesel meant the project, under the university's Engineering Projects in Community Service programme, was satisfying to work on.

"I definitely think alternative fuel is the way to go."

Sarah Johnson, 22, said this early stage of the project would be followed by development of a plant to start producing enough biofuel to power some machinery at the island's transfer station.

Waiheke Waste Resource Trust spokesman George Blanchard, a former mechanical engineering lecturer, hoped diggers and other machines at the station would be running on the biofuel by next year.

It cost Waiheke restaurants $25 a drum to get the oil off the island, he said, but restaurants on the mainland were being paid $5 a drum for theirs.

"I reckon it's a win-win if we can turn it into something useful and it's a cost saving."

Transport Minister Pete Hodgson said last month that the Government hoped to have biofuels on sale at the pump by 2008.