UConn Leads Way In Clean Energy Research

Timothy Bleasdale

January 26, 2007

President Bush stood before Congress and urged the nation toward the use of cleaner and more efficient fuels in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. 
 
"Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America's economy running and America's environment clean," Bush said. 
 
In his remarks on cleaner energy, the president highlighted the use of biofuels. He urged the nation to press on with research to expand the use of hybrid and clean-diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. 
 
Unknown to many around campus, UConn is already playing a role in this vital research. The University of Connecticut Biofuels Consortium is currently continuing biofuel research and production. 
 
Biofuels, as the name suggests, are fuels produced from biological sources such as the sugars in corn, beets or cane, which are fermented into ethanol and blended with gasoline. In the case of biodiesel, vegetable oils such as canola, soy or restaurant waste oil can be used. 
 
Currently, the Consortium produces 50 gallons of biodiesel every two weeks with used cooking oil from university dining facilities around campus, according to Matt Rice, a 6th-semester chemical engineering and environmental engineer double major and the Office of Environmental Policy (OEP) intern serving as liaison to the Consortium. 
 
"The Consortium is currently focused on scaling up production of biodiesel here at UConn," Rice said. "Using a new reactor design set to be tested later this semester, production levels of UConn biodiesel would be [increased 384 percent] to at least 5,000 gallons a year." 
 
Rice added that the new level of biodiesel production would match the waste-oil production level from campus dining halls. With the new reactor, the Consortium would no longer be limited by the chemical process but rather the simple availability of waste oil. 
 
"The current major stumbling block for this project is finding the space and facilities on-campus to house the scaled-up production plant," Rice said. 
 
In connection with their biodiesel production, the Consortium is also working on ways to increase the quality of waste oil coming to their lab from the dining halls. According to Rice, the chemical makeup of the incoming oil changes from day to day and from dining hall to dining hall, depending on how long it was used to cook and how it was stored. 
 
"Variation in Free Fatty Acid (FFA) and water content make converting the oil to biodiesel a difficult task, sometimes resulting in the complete failure of a batch if the variation is too extreme," Rice said. "To improve waste oil quality and ease its transition to biodiesel, the Biofuels Consortium is working with Dining Services to run FFA testing on a regular basis as well as heating more of the waste oil tanks to reduce water accumulation." 
 
In his State of the Union address, Bush cited biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel as alternative fuels for the nation to pursue to decrease dependence on foreign oil. 
 
"Let us build on the work we've done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years," Bush said. 
 
Currently, Connecticut imports 100 percent of its energy, Richard Parnas, associate professor and director of chemical engineering and the head of the UConn Biofuels Consortium wrote in a recent Hartford Courant editorial. Parnas suggests that, with current technology levels, 15 percent of the state's imported petroleum fuels could be displaced if 10 percent of the land were cultivated to produce energy crops for conversion to ethanol and biodiesel. With agricultural technological developments over the next decade, the displacement of petroleum import to Connecticut could surpass 25 percent. 
 
In addition to its work with biodiesel research and production, the Consortium has a number of other initiatives underway. Some of the other areas of interest include development of fast-growing bioenergy crops that are native to New England, process innovation to improve production speed, real-time process monitoring with near-infrared spectroscopy, biofuel transformations to produce high-value-added products (polymers) and resource optimization for energy-crop agriculture. 
 
The Consortium also recently hosted their second Biofuels Symposium Jan. 11, according to Rice. Roughly 230 people from a diverse array of professions attended the event, including state politicians, professors from UConn and other universities, biodiesel distributors and members of the general public. Participants were treated to tours and presentations on advances in high-yield energy crops, the position of biofuels in legislation and efficient energy utilization technologies. 
 
President Bush concluded his remarks on energy by observing that the U.S. is "on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil." 
 
"Connecticut can do more than simply imagine it," Parnas wrote. "We have all the pieces needed to move forward - it is a matter of bringing them together."  

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