Green Gas

(Source: DailyOrange.com)

Two researchers from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry are going to start producing biodiesel fuel from dining hall waste on a large scale.

Michael Kelleher and Neal Abrams were awarded the Enititaive grant that funds the operation earlier this month. The Green Energy Cooperative is a project that will include a team of students from SUNY-ESF and The Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

"The project brings students together to find an innovative solution," said Stacey Keefe, executive director of the Enititative. "After graduation, these students will find innovative, responsible solutions to today's issues."

The grant is part of a larger award given to Syracuse University by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, based in Kansas City, Mo. Totaling $3 million, it is a five-year initiative aimed at encouraging community improvement, according to the foundation's Web site.

Sponsoring 53 different projects in the Syracuse community, the Enitiative grant will give $20,000 to begin the Green Energy Cooperative, said Kelleher, director of renewable energy systems at ESF.

The program will utilize a set process to produce the biodiesel fuel, Kelleher said. Students will gather used vegetable oil from dining halls on campus, which will then be brought to the biodiesel reactor on the ESF campus. Finally, through a laboratory process, the oil will be turned into clean, biodiesel fuel. It is this fuel that will power SU diesel vehicles.

The business portion of the project deals with the sale of the freshly made fuel. Whitman students will negotiate and sell the fuel to SU and ESF, and any profits from the sale of the fuel will be reinvested in other sustainability projects.

The exact costs of the process have not yet been determined, Kelleher said.

Kelleher and Abrams have experimented with the waste-to-fuel process in the past but only produced small amounts of the fuel, Kelleher said. Now the additional funding will allow for a much larger operation, he said.

"These are investments in our future." Kelleher said. "We have to live more compatibly with our environment."

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