Alternative fuel brewing in man's yard

ASHFIELD, Mass. -- The slick brown goo that Tom Leue concocts in his backyard chemistry lab isn't as appetizing as the french fries it once cooked, but Leue gets plenty of mileage out of the used restaurant oil.

With a dash of wood alcohol and a sprinkle of lye, Leue brews the grease trap sludge into biodiesel, an environmentally friendly fuel that powers diesel engines and heats homes.

Biodiesel can be produced from soybean oil or recycled vegetable oil from restaurants. It produces none of the carbon monoxide or small particles created by burning traditional petroleum-based diesel fuel.

"Petroleum is awful for the environment," Leue said. "It causes global warming and acid rain. It's just not compatible with living things."

Leue's two Volkswagen Jettas with diesel engines run on the stuff; so do his tractor and pickup. His home heating furnace burns it with no problems, he says.

And there's no shortage of the raw material he needs to make the fuel.

Once a week, Leue hops in his Ford pickup truck powered by a tankful of his Yellow Brand Premium Biodiesel and makes the rounds of nearby restaurants.

"Chinese restaurants are my favorite," he says. "They usually use very clean oil."

With a bright yellow tank in the pickup's flatbed, Leue sucks up to 200 gallons of grease that the restaurants save for him.

Little hardware needed

Back at his makeshift lab -- a converted maple sugaring house coated with the dull odor of cooking oil -- Leue pumps the sludge into a holding tank and begins transforming it into fuel. Sap pans, a 24-gallon hot water heater and a huge soup cauldron Leue got from a school cafeteria are about all the hardware he needs.

The oil is pumped through a series of filters to remove bits of food and other sediment. Then the addition of lye and wood alcohol separates useless glycerin from what becomes the fuel. After settling overnight, the brew is ready.

Leue, a 53-year-old biologist who also inspects septic systems and has done energy and asbestos removal consulting for towns and schools in the area, started making biodiesel about three years ago.

He learned how to do it when he and his wife decided to wean themselves off petroleum-based oil. And Leue's failure to make a living off small farming and maple syrup left him with a stash of equipment he needed.

"People like syrup on their pancakes maybe once a week, but they have to drive every day," Leue says. "So it makes sense to provide a fuel for them that won't hurt the environment the way gasoline does."

While Leue's operation is low-tech, his product is high-priced. At $2.50 a gallon, sales of Yellow Brand Premium Biodiesel are sluggish .

Selling to stores

"There's a lot of interest in it, but not a lot of sales," says Margaret Keith, owner of Elmer's Country Store in Ashfield center, where two 5-gallon jugs of Yellow Brand sit on the floor. Yellow Brand is also sold at an Easthampton auto shop and will soon be on the shelves in a Greenfield market.

Still, Leue churns out about 240 gallons a week and says he has no surplus. Most of the biodiesel is sold straight from the pump he has on his property.

Richard Baruc, one of Leue's customers, says he has not problems with his two family vehicles after using Yellow Brand. "Our pickup loves it," said Baruc, who buys fuel from Leue in 55-gallon drums.

Baruc, who runs a farm in Orange with his wife, says their 1997 Ford pickup gets 19 miles to the gallon. Their 1980 Mercedes gets 24 miles to the gallon.

"It's just as good as we'd get with regular diesel," he said.

While small-batch production of biodiesel is uncommon -- state, federal and industry officials said they don't know of any other homegrown operations in New England -- popularity of the alternative fuel is growing in America.

Five million gallons of biodiesel were produced last year, and industry officials say 20 million gallons will be produced by the end of 2001, according to the National Biodiesel Board.

The board says there are more than 100 fleets of public and private trucks and buses across the country that are fueled by biodiesel.

But Higgins warned consumers to make sure the product is approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Leue said he's applied to register as a fuel producer with the EPA.

Leue said he isn't trying to compete with large-scale biodiesel production companies but hopes to at least provide an education on the availability of clean-burning fuels.

"It may be more expensive but biodiesel has benefits built into that cost. You're not adding to the burdens of the planet by using this product."