CHICAGO HEIGHTS | A teacher at Bloom High School has been awarded a $10,000 grant to fund a student project that will create a waste vegetable oil recycling program.

Barry Latham's student project is titled "Free Energy for Me." A chemistry and physics teacher, he received an A+ for Energy grant from BP America.

"During the 2007-08 school year, my advanced chemistry honors class students will convert used school cafeteria cooking oil to biodiesel fuel," Latham said in a news release.

With the grant money, he will purchase equipment to process and store biodiesel fuel produced from the waste oil, he said.

The Bloom teacher's students converted about 20 gallons of used cooking oil into fuel during the past school year and this fall they will build a processor large enough for 55-gallon batches, Latham said.

Latham said the students working on the project should perfect the processor's operation and conduct quality

control testing by the December school break.

Full-scale processing of the used oil will start in January 2008, he said.

Professors from Governors State and Roosevelt universities will assist the students in analyzing the final biodiesel fuel product, Latham said.

"We are hoping that we may be able to convert school district diesel equipment to operate on biodiesel fuel," Latham said.

"Once the recycling program is running sustainably, we will reach out to our feeder school districts to

collect their used cooking oil," the Bloom instructor said.

In addition to the cooking-oil-to-fuel recycling project, the grant will help fund research into solar and wind power and fuel cell technology. That research will be conducted by students in Latham's honors physics classes.

Field trips to solar and wind farms and a biodiesel manufacturing plant are part of

the Bloom project.

- THE TIMES