(421c) Introducing Freshman Students to the Multi-Faceted World of Engineering and Sustainability Through Biofuels Synthesis From Waste Cooking Oil

Well-designed
first year experience courses are mainstays in the curriculum for freshman
engineering students, as well as for freshman in other fields. First year
courses are building blocks in helping a freshman navigate through and discover
a new major. It is imperative for a freshman to be exposed to different
engineering disciplines to experience first-hand the expectations and
variations among them.

VU
Engineering has strategized this teaching opportunity through a series of
freshman mini projects designed by different engineering majors. The curriculum
begins with a seven-week core course that incorporates engineering fundamentals
with hands-on group micro-projects that brings classroom lessons to life. Following
the core course, the students are presented to select two of six interdisciplinary,
hands-on mini projects that expose students to a minimum of two major
disciplines each throughout the second half of the fall and the first half of
the spring semester. Mini projects offered include:

·        
Application of Acoustic
Technologies for Predicting Structural Failure

·        
Biofuels Process and
Sustainability:  Biodiesel Synthesis from Waste Cooking Oil

·        
Electric Car Design

·        
Robotics and MATLAB Programming

·        
The Load/Deflection Character of a
SMARTBEAM

·        
Adsorption ? Drinking Water
Treatment Process

 By
mid-second semester, students select their intended major discipline and spend
the remaining seven-weeks in the chosen disciplinary field.

This
paper will be focused on the Biofuels Process and Sustainability mini project,
which started to be offered in Fall 2011 semester. This project was developed
with the idea of making our young students to be aware of the changes in our
society.  In responding to the need of
our reliance to non-renewable fossil fuels due their depletion and primarily
due their negative impacts to our environment, our society is slowly moving
into an era of so-called bioeconomy, where we attain vital sources of carbon
and energy from biorenewable materials, such as biomass.  It is very crucial
that future generations of our students embrace this transformation. For this
to happen, our students first need to learn about various aspects involved in
bioeconomy.  This mini project exposed Villanova freshman engineering students
to two very important aspects in bioeconomy, i.e. how transportation liquid
fuels can be produced from biorenewable materials and the sustainability issues
related to how biofuels are produced and utilized. Specifically, the goal of
this project is for students to use basic engineering and chemistry principles
to synthesize and characterize biodiesel from a renewable resource, i.e. waste
cooking oil from VU dining centers, use the experimental data to design a
biodiesel processing plant and finally assess the sustainability of the
process.

The
7-week freshman engineering project was presented as a combination of lectures
and in class group exercises on various aspects on biofuels production and
sustainability. Hands-on laboratory experiments on biodiesel synthesis and
characterization, analysis on energy usage and heat transfer of the synthesis
process, and the synthesis of soap from glycerin by-product were performed in
the weeks following the lectures. Students
go through the elementary transesterification of WCO into biodiesel while
producing a by-product of glycerin.  From
the experiments, students prepared laboratory reports, one on the chemistry and
mass balance aspects of biofuels synthesis and the other the energy and heat
transfer aspects of the biofuels synthesis. The
report preparation involves students to conduct technical literature searches,
perform data collection, and use spreadsheets to analyze data and perform numerical
analysis In addition to the chemistry and heat transfer aspects of biodiesel production;
the element of entrepreneurship is also incorporated in the soap production via
glycerol byproduct. Students are also exposed to scale-up of lab synthesis to a
commercial level of a biodiesel production facility. The schedule of learning activities and gained skills
from each activity are described in the Table below.

The
freshman engineering project on biofuels was also developed in conjunction with
the on-going student-run Villanova Biodiesel program in the department of chemical
engineering.  In the 2-year old biodiesel production program, students operate
a biodiesel production facility located in the department of chemical
engineering's unit operation lab to convert waste cooking oil to into
biodiesel.  The production facility has the capacity to process all of the
approximately 7000 gallons waste cooking oil that is produced from the dining
service yearly.  Currently, only about 10-15% of the waste cooking oil is
processed for biodiesel production.  In order to increase the capability of the
facility to produce more biodiesel, more student participations are needed. The
proposed mini project can serve as a recruiting tool by introducing new
engineering freshman students to various aspects involved in the production of
biofuels, which will make the students better prepared should they decide to
participate in the Villanova Biodiesel program.

Overall,
the freshman mini project is geared to provide engineering students with
motivation for the consideration and recognition of engineering design and
development examples in daily life. Apart from introducing students to a
variety of engineering design and development tools, the mini projects have
been a seed in helping students decide early on in their journey for a
successful undergraduate career.

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