EERC works on jet fuel alternative

It s a program that aims to make jet fuel out of things like vegetable oilright here in North Dakota Tucked away in the heart of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks is the Energy and Environmental Research Center Hailed as many centers of excellence for energy related fields the EERC is working on some interesting projects One of them involves turning an ordinary substance into something more valuable Ryan Davidson has more If you ve ever been flying or near an airport you may have seen one of these Jet-A truck A refueling truck that dispenses a fuel called Jet-A Jet fuel Used by commercial and private airlines There is another version of this fuel which is used by the US military a Jet Propellant called JP-8 At the EERC their major focus on alternative fuels lies within military applications Gerald Groenewold Director EERC ironically one of the most energy insecure entities in this country is the US military because they rely on enormous amounts of fuel which are primarily made from imported oil The EERC has been very successful in developing an alternative fuels program in collaboration with the US department of defense They are working together to domestically produce military grade JP-8 from several varieties of plain ordinary right from the grocery store vegetable oils also focused on taking natural gas and converting it to a liquid product and enhancing that product with proprietary technology we have to make a drop-in what we call a drop-in JP-8 a clone of JP-8 that s very successful the crop oil work is very successful Scientists in the laboratory get bulk size crop oils from places like Sam s club or Costco And using their proprietary catalyst a substance that chemically changes the vegetable oil and a variety of procedures and machines they convert the vegetable oil into JP-8 jet fuel So that all of this Can be used to power this In Grand Forks Ryan Davidson KX News The EERC in Grand Forks is the premier coal research facility in the world as well as having unrivaled research into ethanol hydrogen and many other energy and environmentally related fields