Yuzhi Xi

BioDiesel Production Intership

I work for the biodiesel project under Center for Sustainability Education at Dickinson College for over two years. In the shop, I work with two other interns to make biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil. We collect used vegetable oil from Dickinson Dining Services and other community partners like the War College and Issei Noodle. The waste vegetable oil is converted into biodiesel with a series chemical reactions under controlled conditions. I am mainly in charge of testing reaction recipes and performing quality control tests for the fuel we produced. The knowledge I’ve gained from my chemistry classes helps me a lot in this position. Transferring concepts and principles from textbooks into real products is an exciting and amazing experience for me.

 

For the community, the biodiesel shop hosts tours in the shop and assists lab classes on how to make biodiesel. In the summer of 2013, I got to explain the chemistry of biodiesel to seventh graders with colorful drawing and fun activities. It was a great challenge but a memorable experience for me. When I leave Dickinson and the biodiesel shop in a few weeks, I will definitely miss my work down in the shop and all the people I worked with, my supervisors, my colleagues, and the seventh graders who listened to me for half an hour about organic chemistry.