FAIRHOPE — Making fuel that will run cars and trucks from things we would normally throw out, grow for another purpose or compost sounds like science fiction.

But, Jack and Allen Boykin of Cello Energy in Daphne insist it’s science fact and are trying to round up local farmers to provide the raw materials to their “demonstration” plant under construction in Bay Minette. They say that more than 20 larger plants will go on-line in Florida over the next year or so. The Bay Minette plant is scheduled to begin operation in August or September of this year. It will require about 150 tons of material per day to be in full operation, and will produce diesel, gasoline and kerosine. Allen Boykin says the plant will produce 20 million gallons of fuel per year. In rough terms, Boykin says it will take 12 to 13 pounds of organic matter to produce a gallon of fuel.

The key to the process is that farmers will have to store the material until it is needed by the plant. They will have to truck the material to the plant, or make arrangements with the plant to pick it up. There are also restrictions on the moisture content of the material.

“This is a small plant,” said Boykin, the elder of the father-son pair and a chemist. “The plant should employ 35 to 50 people.” Boykin added that Cello Energy was trying to get contracts from farmers in a “20 to 50 mile radius” around the plant. Jack Boykin did not address the meeting.

Unlike plants that produce ethanol, a form of alcohol often added to gasoline, this product can be a diesel fuel or gasoline, the elder Boykin says.

“This is completely miscible (in diesel fuel), said Allen Boykin, using a word that means “able to mix in all proportions” to a chemist. The product will be “sold to all distributors.”

The Boykins and Auburn University professor David Bransby addressed a invitation-only meeting of about 50 local farmers and agriculture officials at the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station in Fairhope, Monday, April 21. While the catalysts the Boykins have developed mean that they can produce fuel from a variety of material, including waste plastic, the best material for their purposes is “trees, grass or straw,” Boykin says.

While this sounds good, Bransby noted that no food crops like corn or soybeans are used in the production of this fuel.

Even better, Boykin says the plant could be “built in a Wal-Mart parking lot.” He claims there is no solid or liquid effluent from the plant. The plants can be built on 10-acre sites, and the company wants to “put two in every state.”

Using corn and soybeans to make ethanol has lead to an increase in the price of food, something that anyone who has been to a supermarket recently has noticed. According to Bransby, about 15 percent of the 2007 U.S. corn crop was used to produce ethanol.

Because ethanol is corrosive, it can’t be put into pipelines and distributed the way petroleum products are. That means ethanol has to be trucked from place to place, or put on a train, increasing its costs.

That’s not a problem for Cello’s product, Boykin says.

“We don’t want any foodstuffs for the plant,” Boykin said.

One of the best fuel sources, Bransby said, is “switchgrass,” a form of tall grass that is native to most of the United States. The “Alamo” variety, first found in Texas, seems to have the best properties. Best of all, according to the speakers at the April 21 conference, the grass can be grown on “waste” areas of a farm, on land that cash crops can’t be raised on. Another advantage is that the grass provides habitat for a number of wild creatures.

There’s no firm price for the Cello product, but Boykin and Bransby indicated that there could be a considerable savings over petroleum based diesel.

This is good news to Alan Norden, a farmer in Silverhill. Norden has 35 acres, and raises bees, a variety of fruits and vegetables and a small amount of livestock on his land. He’s attended a lot of these “bio energy” conferences, and likes a lot of what he hears.

“I am looking into growing switchgrass. I’ve made arrangements to get some Alamo seed,” Norden said.

For a small farmer, or any farmer, diversity is important, Norden says. He thinks right now he will be producing the switchgrass for seed, not biodeisel, but he’s learned never to say never.

“You have to be diverse in what you are planting,” Norden said. “You never know if the weather will cooperate, or what will happen.”

What Norden is most interested in is being able to run his farm equipment and truck off of this fuel.

“The cost to run the tractor is getting high,” Norden said, speaking the week of April 21. “Diesel is more than $4 per gallon, and “off road” diesel is up to $3.80 per gallon.”

Norden added that his farm is too small to qualify for “pre buys” or preferred pricing from a fuel dealer. He has to buy his diesel the way most of us do - at a pump. Despite using fuel-efficient vehicles and equipment, he says that right now he uses about 30 gallons of diesel per week.

“I am paying market rate and it sucks,” said Norden, who added that this increased cost will be soon be felt by consumers.

“I am hoping I can bring my vehicles to the plant and fill them up. Surely I can do that.”

Norden is a supporter of biodeisel, pointing to a successful test plant in Daphne (which converts cooking oil to fuel, keeping those fats out of the sewer system) and other places.

“There are city and state grants of up to $200,000 to go into biodeisel,” Norden said. “The biggest problem is that you have to remove the glycerin for the oil.”

Even that glycerin has a use. That byproduct of converting cooking oil to fuel can be used to make soap.

There are conversion kits for vehicles that will take care of the glycerin “problem,” Norden added, noting that Wayne Keith of Springville in St. Clair County operates a truck and a hay-hauling vehicle using wood and waste paper, especially junk mail.

“If we could convert all our paper and waste plastic, it would be wonderful,” Norden said.

Still it’s clear to Norden and others that there’s no one solution to energy self-sufficiency. It will take a number of different technologies to wean this country off foreign oil, something Bransby says is one of the biggest challenges this country faces.

“We have to think practical,” continued Norden. “They have been doing this in Europe for years.”

On Tuesday (April 22, Earth Day) Congress passed tougher CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards which President Bush is expected to sign into law. By some accounts, 2015 passenger cars will need to get 35.7 mpg and trucks will need to reach 28.6 mpg.

“Once the word gets out (about the Boykin process) the price of oil will come down,” said Bransby.