Cheese-powered car breaks speed record

Built by Utah State University students, the 'Aggie A-Salt Streamliner' runs on a biofuel they produced by combining the cheesemaking waste with yeast, and processing the result into a biodiesel.

The student team entered the car at the famed World of Speed held on Bonneville Salt Flats - and set a land speed record of 64.4mph (103.6km/h) for the diesel 1.0-litre two-cylinder vehicle class. It's the first time the class record has been broken by a car fuelled entirely by biodiesel, rather than in a combination with normal diesel.

It's probably also the first time the famed Bonneville speed-bid mecca has seen a dairy-derived entrant among the highly specialised vehicles that roll up to joust the clock. Biochemistry Professor Lance Seefeldt told Carsguide the car attracted non-stop attention on the salt flats.

"The reaction was overwhelming.  We had a small crowd around the car pretty much the entire time," Seefeldt says. "Interest was in the biofuel, the type of engine and transmission we are using, and the team of students involved.

The cheese-derived fuel was one of three the student group developed in Seefeldt's lab, with the other two being based on bacteria and algae - the latter planned for use in next year's Bonneville event.

However he said while the team built the car on a shoestring, they had a strong focus on developing the project into a biofuel with commercial potential. "There is definitely potential for widespread production of biofuels from microbes," Seefeltd says. "Our research is on the front end of working out the technical details.  A company will have to carry the commercialization forward.

"The benefits compared to commercial diesel are many: it's renewable, it can be made from waste, it has a low CO2 footprint, and there's less pollution."