What smells like barbecue and can go 80 miles per hour?

Master Sgt. Brian Hosken’s ride to work.

Sergeant Hosken, the 45th Space Communications Squadron base land mobile radio manager, uses used vegetable oil to fuel his 1985 turbo-diesel Mercedes Benz car. He’s been doing that for nearly three months now.

“When gas hit nearly $3 per gallon, I decided it was time to start using the oil,” he said. “I knew about using vegetable oil a few years ago. But with gas only being around $1.50 per gallon, it wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Now I think it is worth the trouble,” he said.

Using free vegetable oil and a couple of simple additives, Sergeant Hosken has been able to make his environmentally friendly fuel for around 50 cents per gallon. That includes everything, he said.

Sergeant Hosken gets his vegetable oil free from small restaurants.

“Every time I would go to a restaurant, I would ask about their cooking oil,” he said. “It drove my wife crazy for the first month or so. Now she’s getting used to the idea and she thinks it’s pretty neat.”

The mixture is commonly called biodiesel.

Biodiesel is not a new technology. It has been used for several years mainly by the farming and trucking industries and has been used in U.S. and state government vehicles. The wing uses biodiesel and E-85, a gasoline-alcohol mix fuel, available at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and here. It already has 60 to 100 vehicles that run on alternative fuels.

And the number of “flex-fuel” vehicles the wing will use is on the rise, said the wing’s fuel manager, Larry Mynatt.

“Most vehicles the wing is buying now are flex-fuel,” he said.

Despite biodiesel’s low emissions (roughly 75 percent lower harmful emissions than fossil fuel diesel, according to EPA studies) and its low cost, its popularity still hasn’t taken off with the American public.

Sergeant Hosken says that is due mainly to the low number of diesel vehicles in the United States and because the standard process of making the fuel can be complicated and dangerous. The production of commercial biodiesel typically involves a nine-step chemical-reaction process, according to the Web site www.biodiesel.org.

Florida’s warm climate is what allows Sergeant Hosken to use a simpler process. He says in cooler climates, there is a risk of the fuel solidifying in the tank and fuel lines. Commercial manufacturers use the more complicated process to make the fuel less temperature-sensitive. Here, he just makes sure the fuel can withstand temperatures as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

“I just put it in the refrigerator for a few hours and if it stays liquid, then I know that it’s good,” he said.

Sergeant Hosken said the only drawback to the fuel is that he’s noticed a loss of about 10 percent of his car’s horsepower. But that’s not a major concern for him. On the plus side, there is no obnoxious smell of diesel exhaust.

“The exhaust usually smells like whatever was cooked in the oil,” he said. “But it usually comes out smelling like barbecue.”