KSC Student Team Finalist in EPA’s People, Prosperity, and The Planet Award Competition

January 31, 2008

On Tuesday, a Keene State College student team was announced a winner of the prestigious P3 finalist grant – an EPA award for achieving sustainable solutions to environmental issues.

So we went over to talk to Nora Travis, one of the faculty leaders of the project – and we were actually a bit struck by the scale of the project they were working on. It’s a full life-cycle project to collect waste grease locally, process it locally into clean fuel, and then use it locally in city and college vehicles.

(Did I mention this all happens locally?)

Some other neat things:

• They are partnering with the city of Keene to do some of this, and it could have a very real positive impact on Keene’s air quality and aging infrastructure.
• It’s cross-disciplinary – they are working from both the health and environmental angles, and even partnering with the architecture students to produce a green processing facility.
• The team gets to take its project to Washington and pitch it to the National Academies. If they like it, they could get up to $75,000 to fund it.

But I’ll let them tell you directly in the snippets below:

Response to “What is the P3 competition?”

Response to “Where does waste grease come from?”

Response to “How and where can bio-diesel be used?”

You can view the full interview here.

Dr. Nora Travis (from the video above) also did an interview for WTSA radio on Wednesday about the project. That interview is available here.

Press inquiries can be directed to Nora Travis at nvelazquez@keene.edu / 603-358-2974 or Melinda Treadwell at mtreadwe@keene.edu/ 603-358-2945. Robin Dutcher from College Relations is also available at rdutcher@keene.edu / 603-358-2119.

Posted in Biodiesel, Health and Safety