01:51 PM CDT on Monday, July 10, 2006

By Nancy Holland / 11 News

Our rising gas prices have finally leveled off and in many places they're actually falling now.

KHOU-TV

Rice University students are working on biodesel fuel.

But not as much here in Houston, where you'll find the average price for a gallon of unleaded at $2.89.

That's seven-cents more expensive than the state average of $2.82.

The cheapest gas in Texas is in Corpus Christi, at $2.65, according to AAA.

Could the road to relief at the pump be paved with French fries?

That might sound crazy, but it's a real theory being explored by students at Rice University.

Roy Perez fills his mower a couple of times a week and if you look closely, you'll see he's using biodiesel.

"It works great actually it's cleaner and it smells like food actually," said Perez, a groundskeeper.

That's because as Perez mows up to 10 acres of the Rice campus each day, what's in his tank was once cooking oil in Rice cafeterias.

"Anything from frying your shrimp in the cafeteria to French fries, anything like that," said student Lizzi Clark.

Rice students built a closet-sized processing plant, put the used oil in and let it settle.

"It comes through this pump and we pump it through these filters to take out anything else," Guyton Durnin.

If you could look through the equipment it would look like this test lab where the oil goes in, add some chemicals, it cooks at about the temperature of bathwater, ends up in a water wash and biodiesel comes out.

It would work as well they say with crops as it does for used oil.

"Given the volume of agricultural land we're paying farmers not to farm on, we could put that into production for oil crops, soybean, canola, oil palms," said student Matt Yarrison.

The Rice students liked the idea of homegrown energy for a lot of reasons.

"You can put this in any diesel engine unmodified and it cuts down on the pollutants," said Clark.

At least some of them.  There are still questions about one byproduct.

"It produces more nitrous oxides, NOx.  The problem with that is if you mix NOx and volatile organic compounds you get smog," said Durnin.

They are working on that. And while they don't expect every car to run on biodiesel anytime soon, they do think the Rice shuttles might.

And they think they may be cooking up a good plan for the U.S. and for the environment.