Biodiesel fuels vehicles on UT's campus

Biodiesel fuels vehicles on UT's campus

September 12, 2006

By AMELIA DANIELS
6 News Reporter

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- "Make Orange Green" is the slogan for the University of Tennessee's environmental awareness week.    

Students are moving toward a self-sustaining campus, by using leftover cooking oil to fuel UT vehicles.

"In a week's time, we can produce 200 gallons of B20 for use in facility service vehicles," Scott Curran says.

Curran is a senior engineering student at UT. He's spearheading a project that takes leftover vegetable oil from UT Dining Services and transforms it into biodiesel.

Here's the four step process, starting with the waste cooking oil:

The students heat the oil and then mix it with it alcohol and lye. The chemical reaction causes the liquid to separate into biodiesel and glycerin.

Once they've drained the glycerin, they wash the biodiesel with water.

The finished product must be tested before it's ready to go in the gas tank. "We prefer not to call it biodiesel until it's met specifications," Curran says.

Not only is biodiesel made by recycling cooking oil, it is much cleaner than regular diesel.

Curran says, "Every emissions profile is better, except for the nitrogen emissions which are the same." That means the use of biodiesel dramatically reduces the amount of chemicals polluting the air.  

As of now, the biodiesel produced on campus stays on campus. The students produce more than enough to fuel the 11 facility service vehicles.