Making the Educated Choice: Biodiesel

Two students at the University of Connecticut are spearheading an effort to produce biodiesel on the campus for use in the campus shuttle bus fleet using waste fryer oil from the university’s dining commons.

These UConn students are working to keep the campus shuttle running cleanly.

Chemical engineering graduate student Joanna Domka and undergraduate junior Greg Magoon, a Chemistry major, researched the production process and have proven the feasibility of the concept. On November 12, an event was held where a UConn shuttle bus, powered in part by fuel the students made, brought UConn President Philip E. Austin and other members of the University’s Buildings and Grounds Committee, as well as Director of Environmental Policy Richard Miller, on a loop of the campus. The bus then remained parked at a high-visibility spot on campus, where Magoon and Domka, along with students from the EcoHusky Program, distributed information on biodiesel and some of UConn’s other environmental initiatives. Students were lured by a tent where hot coffee and French toast sticks – one of the foods produced using fryer oil in the dining halls – were handed out.

Raising awareness about biodiesel benefits at events like this is one key to success.

UConn’s dining halls generate about 4000 gallons of waste cooking oil every year, and the University pays to have it removed. Rich Miller reports that producing pure biodiesel on campus and using it in an industry standard “B20” blend with conventional petroleum diesel (20% bio-80% petro diesel), the campus could produce enough fuel to run approximately half its fleet of 16 campus shuttle buses at a cost of about 75 cents per gallon – half what the university pays for conventional diesel fuel.

The project was supported by a $15,000 grant from the Provost’s office.

Biodiesel gets a big thumbs-up by UConn students, faculty and staff working on this project.

For more on this initiative, you can read this article in the UConn student newspaper, or check out the biodiesel powerpoint presentation (link is in PDF format) Domka and Magoon are using to educate the University community.

For more on the uses and benefits of biodiesel, try the National Biodiesel Board.

—Ned Raynolds