Mayor Bill Haslam, Dr. Stephen A. Smith - Executive Director Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Dr. Jan Simek - President of the U.T., Dr. Joseph DiPietro - U.T. Vice President for Agriculture, Commissioner Jim Fyke - TN Dept. of Environment and Conservation, and Commissioner Ken Givens - TN Dept. of Agriculture participated in a ribbon-cutting event to announce the new Biodiesel Production facility located at the UT Johnson Agricultural Research and Teaching Unit (JARTU), 1750 Alcoa Highway. 
 
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) in partnership with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) will formally open a community-based biodiesel production facility.

Built with an Alternative Fuels Innovations Grant from TDEC, the biodiesel production unit aims to convert waste fryer oil from local restaurants into useable fuel.

Full production, double-shift capacity for the medium-scale mobile unit is approximately 380,000 gallons of biodiesel per year.

SACE will collect waste fryer oil from participating restaurants and the new facility will convert the waste oil into ASTM spec. biodiesel.

The environmentally friendly fuel displaces corresponding volumes of petroleum-based diesel fuel.
 
For additional information about this Biodiesel program, please see www.cleanenergy.org.