Washington University in St. Louis
OP-15: Campus Fleet

The university aims to decrease emissions from the campus fleet by 22% by 2020, increasing the efficiency and decreasing the number and necessity of fleet vehicles. The university uses biofuel technology in support of this goal. From 2011 to 2016, the university partnered with a cooking oil recycling company started by a recent alum (Kelley Green Biofuel). He created a B20 mix of biodiesel-diesel in colder months and B50 in warmer months to fuel three Dining Services delivery trucks. In this business model, the company retrieves waste oil from campus dining locations and filters it locally. The refined fryer oil then goes to Louisville, KY, where it is processed into biodiesel at Kelley's custom-designed plant. The finished biodiesel mix is driven back to St. Louis and pumped from a 500-gallon double-wall storage tank with an electric pump at the university's North Campus. When oil prices dropped at the end of 2016, the company could no longer run this program through St. Louis in a cost effective manner, so the collection was transitioned to a standard oil recycler and the trucks went back to running on standard diesel. During this time, the Office of Sustainability and Dining Services created a partnership with a local high school that had a small-scale oil recycling program run by the chemistry teacher. A grant was received to expand their operations to run a similar full-circle program. Contract negotiations, infrastructure upgrades, insurance and other logistics have taken more time than expected for the program to become operational. The launch date is expected to be May 2018. Additional equipment has been installed so that the trucks can run on B50 year round, without risk of the fuel clogging.