CHARLESTON, W.Va. - For the past eight months, consumers have watched as the price of gasoline and diesel has doubled. With demand down and the world economy in a slump, prices have slid back, but nobody expects them to stay low.

Alternative energy is being explored as a way to end crude-oil dependence. Actually, it's already here. For a chemical company in the industrial environs of Nitro to a commune in the Pocahontas County hills, biodiesel is the answer.

This year, AC&S Inc., a chemical manufacturing company in Nitro, became the first commercial manufacturer of biodiesel in West Virginia.

AC&S expanded into biodiesel as a way to add another line of business for the company that largely has focused on cleaning rail cars, environmental sampling and chemical synthesis. They began making biodiesel in January. By April, they were selling it, and now, through a distributor, they supply biodiesel to schools in two dozen West Virginia counties.

"It was really a soup-to-nuts sort of operation for us," AC&S President Bob Cantrell explained. "We had to decide to do it. We had to figure out if we could do it - then learn to do it.

"We've had to figure out what the market was, how the product was taxed and who to sell it to. Now we're just trying to educate the public about it."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the state, Zoe, a member of a nearly 40-year-old art commune called the Zendiks that has traveled from California to Texas to North Carolina. The group settled in West Virginia five years ago.

Heavily tattooed and espousing an earth-friendly philosophy, Zoe started making biodiesel for his group to fuel their collection of 20-year-old cars and trucks.

"I got interested in biodiesel back when we lived in Texas in 1993," he said. "We've always farmed organically. In Texas, we raised 300 acres of wheat, which we sold to people like Arrowhead Mills, but the tractors we used coughed out so much smoke. Something about the whole thing seemed wrong."

What is biodiesel?

Biodiesel is a fuel made from vegetable oils or animal fats. It works in most diesel engines and has similar properties to conventional diesel fuel. In its purest form, called B100, the fuel contains no petroleum products, is nontoxic and virtually odorless. It's even beneficial to the metal parts of a diesel engine, which it naturally lubricates.

"And it's better for the environment," Cantrell said. "It leaves less of a carbon footprint than regular diesel."

"Using biodiesel is a step toward energy independence," said AC&S Executive Vice President Dean Cordle. "The money used to produce it comes from here and stays here. It goes into our community and our country, not to dictators in far-off places."

Consumers that use biodiesel mostly use blends known as B5 (5 percent biodiesel) or B20 (20 percent biodiesel), which are combined with regular diesel fuel. Normal diesel engines can run on 100 percent biodiesel, but the fatty oils play havoc with natural rubber and some plastic engine components, causing them to degrade over time.

There are side effects to switching to biodiesel. The fuel acts as a powerful cleaner and can loosen carbon buildup inside a standard diesel fuel tank. It's actually beneficial, but the short-term effect is that it tends to choke the fuel filter until the carbon is gone.

Cordle and Cantrell see biodiesel, produced in West Virginia, as a significant piece in the overall energy plan for the state and think it could be used to enhance the coal industry. Biodiesel can be used to power everything from heavy trucks to tugboats to mining equipment. Underground, it might be particularly valuable since it's less toxic.

The alternative alternative

At the Zendik farm, they use converted fry oil, the same stuff used in restaurants to make french fries and onion rings.

Zoe is the group's master welder and tinker. His interest in biodiesel started years ago. He liked the idea of a fuel that had a low toxicity and could be used in existing machines, but information at the time was sketchy.

He kept an interest in the fuel, but biodiesel was largely shelved for years. After the Zendiks moved to West Virginia, Zoe started looking into biodiesel to help reduce the group's fuel costs. Partly, the Zendiks support their community through frequent trips to cities and festivals to sell their literature, music, T-shirts and bumper stickers. It's a lot of people doing a lot of driving. Rising fuel prices affected them just as much as anyone else.

There were different models, different plans and he explored many of them. Some were less successful than others.

"I found one guy who swore by this one mix," Zoe said. "I tried it out and ended up with something that looked an awful lot like mayonnaise. I had to scoop it up with a shovel."

Eventually, he settled on a design. Scrounging parts from a junkyard and using castaway water heaters from the local hardware store, he found his machine. It even passes a slight resemblance to the giant tanks used by AC&S.

To make the fuel, he asked around at local diners and offered to clean out their grease bins for them.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - For the past eight months, consumers have watched as the price of gasoline and diesel has doubled. With demand down and the world economy in a slump, prices have slid back, but nobody expects them to stay low.

Alternative energy is being explored as a way to end crude-oil dependence. Actually, it's already here. For a chemical company in the industrial environs of Nitro to a commune in the Pocahontas County hills, biodiesel is the answer.

This year, AC&S Inc., a chemical manufacturing company in Nitro, became the first commercial manufacturer of biodiesel in West Virginia.

AC&S expanded into biodiesel as a way to add another line of business for the company that largely has focused on cleaning rail cars, environmental sampling and chemical synthesis. They began making biodiesel in January. By April, they were selling it, and now, through a distributor, they supply biodiesel to schools in two dozen West Virginia counties.

"It was really a soup-to-nuts sort of operation for us," AC&S President Bob Cantrell explained. "We had to decide to do it. We had to figure out if we could do it - then learn to do it.

"We've had to figure out what the market was, how the product was taxed and who to sell it to. Now we're just trying to educate the public about it."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the state, Zoe, a member of a nearly 40-year-old art commune called the Zendiks that has traveled from California to Texas to North Carolina. The group settled in West Virginia five years ago.

Heavily tattooed and espousing an earth-friendly philosophy, Zoe started making biodiesel for his group to fuel their collection of 20-year-old cars and trucks.

"I got interested in biodiesel back when we lived in Texas in 1993," he said. "We've always farmed organically. In Texas, we raised 300 acres of wheat, which we sold to people like Arrowhead Mills, but the tractors we used coughed out so much smoke. Something about the whole thing seemed wrong."

What is biodiesel?

Biodiesel is a fuel made from vegetable oils or animal fats. It works in most diesel engines and has similar properties to conventional diesel fuel. In its purest form, called B100, the fuel contains no petroleum products, is nontoxic and virtually odorless. It's even beneficial to the metal parts of a diesel engine, which it naturally lubricates.

"And it's better for the environment," Cantrell said. "It leaves less of a carbon footprint than regular diesel."

"Using biodiesel is a step toward energy independence," said AC&S Executive Vice President Dean Cordle. "The money used to produce it comes from here and stays here. It goes into our community and our country, not to dictators in far-off places."

Consumers that use biodiesel mostly use blends known as B5 (5 percent biodiesel) or B20 (20 percent biodiesel), which are combined with regular diesel fuel. Normal diesel engines can run on 100 percent biodiesel, but the fatty oils play havoc with natural rubber and some plastic engine components, causing them to degrade over time.

There are side effects to switching to biodiesel. The fuel acts as a powerful cleaner and can loosen carbon buildup inside a standard diesel fuel tank. It's actually beneficial, but the short-term effect is that it tends to choke the fuel filter until the carbon is gone.

Cordle and Cantrell see biodiesel, produced in West Virginia, as a significant piece in the overall energy plan for the state and think it could be used to enhance the coal industry. Biodiesel can be used to power everything from heavy trucks to tugboats to mining equipment. Underground, it might be particularly valuable since it's less toxic.

The alternative alternative

At the Zendik farm, they use converted fry oil, the same stuff used in restaurants to make french fries and onion rings.

Zoe is the group's master welder and tinker. His interest in biodiesel started years ago. He liked the idea of a fuel that had a low toxicity and could be used in existing machines, but information at the time was sketchy.

He kept an interest in the fuel, but biodiesel was largely shelved for years. After the Zendiks moved to West Virginia, Zoe started looking into biodiesel to help reduce the group's fuel costs. Partly, the Zendiks support their community through frequent trips to cities and festivals to sell their literature, music, T-shirts and bumper stickers. It's a lot of people doing a lot of driving. Rising fuel prices affected them just as much as anyone else.

There were different models, different plans and he explored many of them. Some were less successful than others.

"I found one guy who swore by this one mix," Zoe said. "I tried it out and ended up with something that looked an awful lot like mayonnaise. I had to scoop it up with a shovel."

Eventually, he settled on a design. Scrounging parts from a junkyard and using castaway water heaters from the local hardware store, he found his machine. It even passes a slight resemblance to the giant tanks used by AC&S.

To make the fuel, he asked around at local diners and offered to clean out their grease bins for them.

"I had no problem getting takers," he said.

Restaurants typically pay a fee to have someone come and remove the grease. Zoe offered to do it for free.

It was a filthy job. He had to clean and strain the oil. The early process was very hands-on and he often came away soaked in grease. Luckily, an added benefit of their biodiesel product is soap.

"I didn't know if it was really going to work," he said. "But I added 1 gallon of the biodiesel into the tank and the truck still worked. I got brave and added 2 gallons in with the regular diesel, then 3, and finally it was running just fine."

It was so successful, the Zendiks bought a pair of high-mileage 20-year-old diesel luxury cars. Zoe says they're getting about 36 miles to the gallon with the biodiesel, which is 10 miles to the gallon more than they got with regular diesel. The savings speak for themselves.

"I can do it for about 78 cents a gallon," he said. "I could do it for less, but the price of methanol went up."

The price of diesel is currently hovering between $3 and $3.20.

Because he gets the oil free, chemicals (mostly methanol) are his only real costs. He says he could make the same product using soybean oil, just like the commercial outfits, but using the dirty fry oil fits in with the Zendik philosophy. Nothing they do competes with feeding people.

Cordle and Cantrell agree with Zoe, at least about not wanting to force consumers to choose between feeding their families and feeding the family car. Ninety-five percent of their costs, they say, come from food oil prices.

"We're trying to get away from food sources," Cantrell said. "Biodiesel is about sustainability. We're using soy oil right now, but we're looking into other materials like African nut oils and even chicken fat - things that don't impact the food chain."

The race is on to find sources that don't interfere with grocery-store prices. Right now, the biodiesel industry is very excited about the prospects of using algae, which wouldn't drive up grocery prices.

Zoe has heard about oil from algae, too. He says the promise of algae is that it could be produced in relatively small spaces. He's heard theories about farming the stuff, setting up huge fields where sheets of algae held in plastic might sway in the breeze like laundry on a clothesline.

That's probably more advanced than what he can do at the farm. He laughs and wonders if he could grow enough in the pond out back of the Zendik house.

Cordle says the kind of thing the Zendiks are doing isn't unheard of. Just about anybody could manufacture biodiesel, but on a mass scale, it isn't practical. There just aren't enough french fries and results can vary wildly.

"Our biodiesel conforms to established standards," he said. "We're following all the rules and regulations there are from everyone from weights and measures to the state tax departments to federal offices. Since we're the first, we've had to learn as we go. It's new. I think everybody is learning as they go."

Cantrell is happy to be supplying school buses in West Virginia with biodiesel, but he's itching to do more. AC&S can manufacture 3 million gallons of biodiesel a year, which is less than half of 1 percent of what the U.S. currently uses. They could do more, would love to do more, but are waiting for the market to demand it.

"I'd love to get this in a truck stop in Winfield or even up the road here in Nitro," he said. "There are truckers who use nothing but biodiesel, except when they come through West Virginia. Nobody is selling it. I think they'd buy up everything we could give them. We just don't have a way to do that yet."

Cantrell says they're talking with several people about different partnership opportunities. They're just getting started.

Meanwhile, Zoe and the Zendiks are sharing what they know. Through November and early December they're offering weekend workshops on how to build a biodiesel processor. The information is all stuff Zoe cobbled together.

"The difference is I've already made the mistakes so you don't have to."

Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 348-5195.

Want to learn more?

For more information about the Zendik Farm biodiesel workshops and how to build your own small-scale biodiesel processor, call (304) 799-7281 or e-mail ka...@zendik.org.