Seniors develop new way to produce biodiesel

Photo by Kim Bonner

Sebastien Douville '06 (l.) and Nathan Lowery '06 are starting a business in alternative energy as part of their senior theses in the MAE department.

Next year, Sebastien Douville '06 and Nathan Lowery '06 plan to avoid the well-worn career paths of investment banking and consulting.

Instead, the two mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) students are starting their own business, Axios Energy LLC, to produce biodiesel, a fuel made from natural materials such as soybean oil.

The duo could have a major competitive advantage in this enterprise because of a new technology they have developed as part of their senior thesis.

They found biodiesel to be an appealing thesis topic for both environmental and monetary reasons.

Environmentally, biodiesel is a "very clean fuel, with low particulate and sulfur emissions," Douville said.

Biodiesel also has promising economic prospects. With new EPA emissions standards coming out in 2006, biodiesel will become even more valuable because of its ability to improve low-sulfur diesel fuels when the two are mixed together, Douville said.

Douville and Lowery see biodiesel development as a major opportunity because "the field is so young," Douville said.

"There are lots of inefficiencies, and lots of potential," he added.

Lowery said that, since it is such a new fuel, all the biodiesel currently being produced is being bought.

"The diesel market is ready to buy whatever you produce," Lowery said. "Right now, anybody could get into it."

He speculated, however, that once government subsidies are removed, it will become apparent that Douville's technique is much more efficient than cruder methods of biodiesel production.

The method the two hope to prove for their thesis is "potentially 40 times better" than current methods, Lowery said. He added, however, that they can't reveal the details of the technique because of a concern that "somebody else might get the idea."

This year, their challenge will be to design a reactor that can use their scientific technique, Douville said.

After graduation, they hope to gather other experts in engineering and expand their technology into a large-scale New Jersey operation that would serve the East Coast.

"If we are the biggest producer in the region, we can really work that economy of scale to drive down feedstock costs," Douville said.

The focus on industrial scalability makes their thesis unusual for an MAE thesis, Douville said. Partially because of this, the faculty awarded their proposal an honorable mention for a departmental award, the John Marshall II Memorial Prize, to cover expenses that regular thesis funding does not.

Douville and Lowery said they were inspired to start their company by Electrical Engineering 491, taught by Ed Zschau '61. "He really stresses the idea of starting something yourself," Lowery said. Douville and Lowery are writing their business plan for the class' final paper.

The two entrepreneurs are in the process of receiving a provisional patent for their work. The details of patent ownership, however, are still unclear, and they are waiting to hear back from the University office of technology licensing.