PARIS – With a little free time on their hands and a challenge by the forestry program students, those in Luc Roy’s advanced placement chemistry class at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School went to work this spring to make fuel.

“We made a bet or a deal with the forestry club,” said recent high school graduate Ben Reis of Norway. “They had wood chips and said you can drive our skidder if you can make fuel for it.”

The chemistry students took the challenge and went to work.

“We looked all over the Internet to find out how to make biofuel from wood chips. We couldn’t find a specific way so Mr. Roy decided to use vegetable oil,” Reis said.

“I had been approached by Al Schaeffer (forestry program instructor) earlier in the year with questions about alternative fuels and the feasibility of powering some of their equipment with school-made fuel,” Roy said. “I started looking into the feasibility of making fuel in the AP chemistry class after the exam was completed and quickly realized that the process fit in well with the curriculum.”

Reis said the students went about putting the procedure into place.

“It was not too complicated,” said Reis, who said it did involve a lot of sitting.

Roy said he found four gallons of used vegetable oil and then began the two-week process that converted it to biofuel. The process included filtration of the oil and water removal, measuring the amount of contaminants in the oil, washing and testing the fuel.

“We ended up with a gallon or two of fuel,” Reis said.

He said the students then put the fuel in the bulldozer, which was on blocks in the Oxford Hills Technical School garage. “When we put it in you could see our fuel came through yellow,” said Reis of the color that distinguished it.

The project was a success, said Reis, who drove the bulldozer back and forth on the school grass with other students.

Reis said if he had a diesel car he would use the mixture. “A lot of people have done it,” he said, noting a high school Spanish teacher uses a different type of refined vegetable oil to fuel his car.

“He has to change his filter pretty often,” Reis laughed.