News 12 at 6 O'Clock, August 20, 2009.

WARRENVILLE -- At a new Warrenville plant on Main Street, you could say Green Valley Bio-fuels will be making chicken salad out of chicken fat.

"It's a byproduct of the people that are putting the food on your table," says plant manager Matt Peterson.

Actually, they'll be turning that animal fat and other vegetable oils into bio-diesel fuel for use in diesel engines. And this secret recipe isn't made from herbs and spices, but trial and error.

J.J. is the man they call "the mad scientist." He's testing hundreds of samples to figure out how to turn feedstock into bio-diesel fuel. It all goes down at three reactors at the plant. They'll produce 90,000 gallons of bio-diesel fuel every single day.

They expect to start manufacturing within two months. That's when you could see the fuel they make available for your fuel tank.

"Lower emissions, better viscosity, better lubricity, and it creates almost the exactly the same horsepower," Peterson adds. "As a product, it's every bit as good as diesel fuel is."

And possibly, every bit as impactful on the local job market.

"We got these 26, 27 people here now. We'll start the plant using those, then we'll transition from construction, engineering people to the full scale manufacturing jobs."

Up to 30 full time jobs are expected. But workers here say they hope there will be more positions and more companies to help lessen dependence on foreign oil.

Says Peterson: "If we can home grow from our own chicken farmers, our own vegetable farmers, if we can create a fuel, then every little bit you take, if you don't take the first step, you'll never get to the end of the journey."