In his State of the Union address, President Bush surprised supporters and detractors alike by confronting them about an addiction most of them wouldn’t have considered: oil.

“By applying the talent and technology of America,” he said, “this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

With gas prices steadily climbing and the growing realization that oil-producing nations cannot sustain their current output indefinitely, many are beginning to look for environmentally sustainable alternatives. Here at the University at Buffalo, a group of students are attempting to attract attention to biodiesel, a fuel that combines traditional and renewable oils in an effort to reduce U.S. demand for international commodities.

Earlier in February, a new campus group called Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), in conjunction with University Facilities, unveiled the first on-campus biodiesel fueling station. A blend of 80 percent diesel and 20 percent biodiesel is now used on a voluntary basis in many of the on-campus snow plows, garbage trucks, and other heavy vehicles. The project started when Paul Hoffman, a Fleet Maintenance Supervisor with University Facilities, converted a 4,000-gallon tank previously used by University Police to be able to hold and pump biodiesel—an excellent way of alleviating environmental pressures caused by diesel fuel.

Biodiesel, a type of diesel fuel derived from vegetable oil, is made through a process called transesterferication. “You’re taking vegetable [oil], taking out the glycerol, and what you get is biodiesel,” says Kelly Miller, a sophomore environmental engineering major and member of ESW. The biodiesel that UB is using, called B20, is the industry standard and a good starting point for testing this new source of fuel. Any diesel engine can use B20 or any concentration of biodiesel, albeit at a two percent (up to a maximum of ten percent depending on the concentration) drop in fuel efficiency. This drop raises costs by only a few cents per gallon. Common sources of biodiesel include mustard seed, sugar cane, or, as in the case of NOCO, UB’s local provider, soybean oil. An added benefit to using soybean oil is that after taking out the oil, the soybeans can then be used as feed for farm animals. Waste grease from fry cookers can also be turned into biodiesel.

The potential of waste grease as a source of fuel can be extended into making the campus a source for biodiesel. At UB, Campus Dining Services (CDS) pays to remove 13.5 tons of waste grease per year. ESW is proposing that after the creation of a small conversion facility on campus, this waste grease can be converted into biodiesel. Currently, the group is testing this by converting grease on a laboratory scale, and they hope to scale up by getting CDS and Facilities on board. Miller and Creighton Randall, a senior mechanical engineering major and member of ESW, note that this waste grease could be converted into approximately 2,400 gallons per year, more than enough to account for the 20 percent of biodiesel needed in making B20 on campus. While it may be difficult to procure the space and funding necessary to create a small conversion facility, the potential for recycling waste grease is another environmental benefit among the many that biodiesel offers, especially in terms of reducing air pollution.

On top of being able to draw on a renewable source, biodiesel relieves problems in connection with air pollution. The emissions coming from the diesel engines used by UB are more potent in terms of air pollution. “Diesel is a lot more carcinogenic than gasoline,” notes Randall, pointing out ESW’s interest in the problem of bus emissions on campus.

On this matter, Miller adds that, “basically we’ve got 25 buses and they are all polluting, and a portion of them daily drive directly under Ellicott tunnel. The ventilation intakes are also in Ellicott tunnel. There are issues where you’ve got buses stopping for a while to pick up kids. You’ve got emissions that are going to be traveling into the dorms, which is a pretty terrible situation.” To remedy this problem, ESW hopes to convince Campus Bussing to switch over to B20. Such a switch would cut the carcinogenic emissions by as much as 12 percent along with the other pollutants connected with diesel fuel. Plus, according to Miller and Randall, carbon dioxide emissions from biodiesel returns to the environment and can be taken in by plants being grown to produce more biodiesel. ESW hopes to further emphasize this matter to Campus Bussing by running a variety of tests on the air in Ellicott tunnel as well in the dorm rooms themselves. To conduct these tests, they will be working in conjunction with the Industry/University Center for Biosurfaces. They are testing the emissions in connection with Facilities’ fleet and hope to get the opportunity to test the bus fleet as well.

A relatively new group (started last year after Miller and sophomore industrial engineering major Noah Bednowitz attended a conference at Stanford in 2004), ESW has ambitious but practical plans for employing the use of an alternative fuel source on campus. While Miller points out that, “no one is out there saying biodiesel is the solution to all of our energy problems,” biodiesel still presents a way of alleviating some of the pressure on foreign oil as well helping diesel-powered vehicles to emit much cleaner exhaust. In the end, the only way to fix the energy problem will be a change in lifestyle and national attitude towards public transportation. Biodiesel will not break us of our dependence on oil, but it remains to be seen if the quality of our air is a compelling enough interest to bring biodiesel into the mainstream.