Fast food fuels biodiesel research at KU
A new team of KU researchers is cooking up a recipe for turning cafeteria grease into fuel for campus buses. Susan Williams, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, and her students are exploring biodiesel possibilities at KU. One scenario includes salvaging used grease from cafeterias and food courts and trucking it over to a pilot plant on west campus, where students could turn it into biodiesel and University buses could burn it as fuel.
"We've got a closed loop," said Williams. "We don't have to pay to ship that grease off anywhere and have anything done to it. We have our own students on campus working in chemistry, physics, engineering and even in the business aspect of it."
Though reaching that goal is a long way off, they are working to get there, eventually, in one of multiple biorefining research projects underway at KU.
Her lab is studying ways to use waste oils, instead of refined oils, to make biodiesel. Refined oils, such as canola oil, produce a good product, Williams said, but they drive up the cost of biodiesel because they have already been through an expensive treatment process.
Williams said many companies produce a lot of waste in the manufacturing of their products. That waste is called soap stock and contains a lot of free fatty acids.
"Those are really cheap," she said. "If we could use those materials, that would drive the cost of biodiesel down to where it would be acceptable for consumers to buy it and put in their vehicle."
