Sometimes, the quirkiest projects can open avenues into more interesting finds, such as in the case of Michael J. Haas and his dairy-to-diesel research. “It was something we wanted to show could be done,” said Michael J. Haas, a research biochemist at the United States Department of Agriculture who came up with the idea.

Interestingly enough, what served as an impetus behind the idea was an 800-pound sculpture of Benjamin Franklin and the Liberty Bell made entirely out of butter. Each year, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state’s Farm Show commissions a work of art crafted out of butter. In 2007, organizers asked for suggestions for what to do with the masterpiece once the farm show ended. Dr. Haas submitted the idea of making biofuel out of it, and so he gained a source of raw materials for his research.

This project was done in collaboration with BlackGold Biofuels, a small company in Philadelphia that has developed a process of creating biodiesel fuel out of inedible, low-value fats, oils and grease. Since the rancid butter was a fat, it was possible to put the sculptures through BlackGold’s chemical conversion process to transform it into usable biodiesel fuel.

Usually, this process is reserved for cooking oil but through BlackGold’s flexible chemical conversion process, it was possible to create fuel out of the butter despite it being rancid. At the end, the 800 pounds of butter sculpture became 75 gallons of a mix of biodiesel fuel and a lower-grade bunker fuel.

Despite the success of converting the rancid butter into fuel, both the researchers and BlackGold do not advocate the diversion of the nation’s butter production into creating biofuel. But BlackGold considers the project as a success, as it demonstrates the robust technology and opens the possibility of converting all kinds of low-grade waste into usable fuel.

In fact, in California, a biodiesel plant that makes use of BlackGold technology has been put up to handle pan scrapings and brown grease from restaurants and turn them into fuel. This goes to show how little goes a long way when it comes to innovation. With more avenues with which to turn waste products into usable resources, we learn to introduce less waste into the environment and reduce our ecological footprint.