Thursday, September 20, 2007
It sounds like something straight out of “Back to the Future”: motor vehicles being powered by food waste. But today, that is exactly what a group of researchers and students at the University of Kansas is aiming to achieve.
The University Biodiesel Initiative is working to produce a practical biodiesel fuel that would consist of food wastes such as vegetable oil in order to reduce air pollutants. The group aims to one day fuel buses on campus with leftovers from The Underground and other eateries.
Susan Williams, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, said the group will start out small before testing the new fuels on campus buses. The buses currently run on B5, which consists of 5 percent biodiesel and 95 percent conventional, petroleum-based diesel.
She said the group would begin by working with the fuel in University lawn equipment.
“The buses will be awhile because we have to get approval to use higher than B5 in the buses and not risk voiding the warranty from the manufacturer,” Williams said.
The group works with two reactors in Burt Hall that can make 40 gallons of biodiesel every five days. The reactors were partially paid for by a $15,000 grant from the Student Senate. Ilya Tabakh, a Shawnee Mission doctoral student involved in the project, asked the Senate for the funds.
“I thought it was a good way to get the ball rolling on this type of research,” Tabakh said. “We need to be responsible stewards of the waste we produce on campus.”
Williams said the group would work on the entire process, from cultivating plants that could produce the fuel to studying how its emissions would affect the environment.
“KU can be a leader in biofuel process improvement and at approaching bio-based fuels from a ‘feedstock to tailpipe approach,’” she said.
Dennis Lane, distinguished professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, said he hoped the project would spread beyond the University campus. He said the University’s location can make the program influential in the region.
Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Adrian Polansky visited the University on Tuesday to meet with researchers involved in the project and examine the reactors. He said many of the technologies being pursued at the University were promising for the future.
“We have strengths in Kansas in these particular areas,” Polansky said. “It makes sense to bring in additional funding and research to build on these strengths.”
—Edited by Rachel Bock
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