MUKILTEO – The day Dylan Pickus carried around a pale yellow concoction in a wide-mouthed jar at Harbour Pointe Middle School, one of his teachers asked if the contents could explode.

If anything, Dylan, 13, a seventh-grader, and four classmates believe the homemade brew might improve the air quality around them.

The mix of vegetable oil, methanol and lye is called biodiesel, a less-polluting alternative fuel. The students had watched an instructor from a University of Washington environmental program make it in a blender at their school.

They studied its potential for months.

Now they want their school district to begin fueling its bus fleet with it. They plan to present their case to the Mukilteo School Board in April.

“It releases less pollutants into the atmosphere, and it will run in all diesel engines with little or no modifications,” said Gary Bernard, 13, an eighth-grader.

Biodiesel is more expensive than diesel, but government tax incentives could help it become more popular, said Emily Anderberg, 13, who is also in the eighth-grade. Also on the team were Julia Podmayer, a seventh-grader, and Sarah Gates, a sixth-grader.

Their research impressed a panel of judges in a national environmental education competition. Harbour Pointe finished second nationally and received $500 in the Volvo Adventure contest backed by the United Nations Environment Program.

The winner, a middle school from Rhode Island, will travel to Sweden in May to present its project with students from 14 other countries. There were 251 entries worldwide.

The Harbour Pointe students began studying biodiesel before and after classes. It became a community and service project – a part of their school’s Middle Years International Baccalaureate curriculum.

Along the way, they visited a lab at the University of Washington that studies environmental health risks associated with particulate exposure. They also visited a UW asthma lab.

The students surveyed classmates about how they feel when they get off the bus, finding that the fumes bothered some. Earlier this month, they were the youngest participants at a biodiesel conference in Seattle where they presented their project.

Shanna Nelson, a Harbour Pointe science and technology teacher, worked with the students.

“I wanted them to approach an environmental problem scientifically, explore a solution and communicate their findings persuasively to other community members,” she said.

To Nelson, it was a fun exercise allowing students from different grades to apply academic skills to real problems.

The students hooked up with Lyle Rudensey, a resource teacher with the UW’s Integrated Environmental Health Middle School Project.

Rudensey uses biodiesel he makes in his garage in his 2002 Volkswagen Jetta. He estimates he can make his fuel for 70 cents a gallon and that he spent about $210 filling up his tank last year.

The Northshore School District is using an 80 percent and 20 percent mix of ultra-low sulfur diesel and biodiesel in 30 buses as part of a pilot project.

After some mechanical concerns early in the year, the buses seem to be performing well now. Even so, it’s still too early to assess its effectiveness, said Randy Wolf, the district’s transportation director.

Dylan Pickus points to gas prices, dwindling petroleum supplies and toxic air pollutants from diesel and hopes the Mukilteo School Board will consider phasing in the use of biodiesel with the district’s buses.

“Eventually, the world will have to get used to it,” he said.

Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@ heraldnet.com.