Biodiesel Project
Starting in 2008, waste vegetable oil from the fryers in Westlawn Dining Hall and snack shop was converted into biodiesel that was used by the college’s back-up electrical generator. The chemical conversion from waste vegetable oil to biodiesel was done in an extensive processor that was built and run by GC students. Each year about 150 gallons of the college’s waste vegetable oil was converted to biodiesel.
The Goshen College Biodiesel Processor operated every semester until spring of 2014, when the chemistry department terminated production in order to focus time and energies on other projects. Although the processor is no longer producing biodiesel, this site offers information on how biodiesel can be made on an intermediate scale.
If you would like to acquire the biodiesel processor, which can handle 75 gallons of waste vegetable oil in a batch, contact Doug Schirch (dougms@goshen.edu) by April 30, 2015. More information about the processor is available at the following links: