Cafeteria Oil Fuels Campus Vehicles
Using a biodiesel processing plant, Babson College is converting waste vegetable oil from campus restaurants to biodeisel for use in diesel powered equipment to maintain the campus grounds.
Biodiesel burns cleaner than petro diesel producing less greenhouse gases and particulate emissions.
The process of converting waste vegetable oil (WVO) to biodiesel is called transesterification. Process breaks bonds in WVO molecules using sodium hydroxide and Methanol to get methyl esters/Biodiesel which is non-toxic and environmentally friendly.
WVO is collected by facilities staff from restaurants on campus (Trim, Reynolds, Hockey Rink). The Process Plant is located in the facilities garage. The plant is comprised of a lab, reactor, catalyst tank and settling/product tank.
Fuel is used as a blend with petro-diesel or 100% in facilities grounds keeping equipment.
