For those who try to help the environment, one of the last ideas that come to mind is burning things.

However, a group of researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences Center for Plasticulture has been awarded an $87,395 grant by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture for their research in plastic-derived fuels, said James Garthe, a Penn State agricultural engineer.

"Our mission is to burn plastic fuel at a high temperature and get a high-quality burn with minimum toxic emissions," Garthe said.

The grant will be used to create a machine that can make Plastofuel -- charcoal briquette-sized nuggets made of various waste plastics, said William Lamont Jr., vegetable crops professor and a member of the team.

The current prototype is a small, hand-operated machine. The money will be used to make a larger machine that can produce 500 pounds of Plastofuel per hour, Garthe said.

The group is working with a Korean company that makes pellet-burning units to convert a boiler system so it can burn Plastofuel, he said.

Plastofuel could be applied in many scenarios, Garthe said.

"A small unit could be placed outside a home to produce heat," Lamont said.

The Korean company's boiler system, which burns plastic pellets, produces a lot of heat -- about 396,000 BTU per hour, Orzelok said.

"This is an ideal opportunity for Penn State to be on the cutting edge of this research," he added.

Plastofuel could also be used to generate electricity, Orzelok said.

The team wants to test the Korean unit's emissions when burning agricultural waste products.

For instance, mulch film -- large, plastic sheets used to keep moisture and warmth in the soil that they cover -- is pulled off the fields after the growing season, made into tiny pellets and burned in the Korean unit, Garthe said.

"This is nothing new," he said, "but Plastofuel is new, and [our] process uses less energy than the traditional pellet-production process does."

Michael Orzolek, professor of vegetable crops and a member of the team, said the drawback with these pellets is that mulch film must be cleaned before the sheets are melted down.

This requires expending energy to make the pellets, even though they end up being burned anyway, Garthe said.

"You've got to look at the energy trade-off. You don't want to put more energy into the development of the fuel," Lamont said.

Garthe said the team has found a way to use more plastics while expending less energy.

"We developed a process in which the outer layer of plastic is melted enough to hold the Plastofuel together," he said.

The result is a nugget composed of waste plastics with a hard outer shell. Compared with the pellet-sized plastics, the nugget-sized plastics allow many more recycled plastics to be used without having to be cleaned for the process, he said.

The plastic nuggets can be made from a variety of agricultural waste plastics, Orzolek said. In addition to mulch film, other products, such as drip irrigation tubes, plastic pots and plastics used to make greenhouses, can be used, he said.

Plastics from recycling centers could also be used to make the nuggets, Garthe said.

One ideal location for a plastic nugget-burning unit would be at every recycling center in the state because the fuel source is right there, he added.

"Plastics [of] Nos. 1 and 2 have a good market in Pennsylvania and nationwide," he said, but plastics of Nos. 4 to 7 "very often go to the landfill." That is unfortunate because the material has already been cleaned and packed into a bale at the recycling center, he said.

The Korean burner has not been tested by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yet, but it has been tested by the Korean Testing Laboratory and passed emissions tests, he said.

Lamont said that in the future, researchers would like to test the burning unit's emissions using the plastic pellets and the nuggets.

"We don't do anything without conforming to EPA and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection standards," Garthe said.

The Korean unit they are currently using preheats on oil for about 15 minutes until it reaches 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, when it switches over to the plastic pellet fuel, Garthe said.

He said this controlled high-temperature combustion produces minimal toxins. Orzolek said it is a "very clean process. No black smoke is produced."

The group is also working with the American Plastics Council and the American Society for Plasticulture, Garthe said.