Student-led project propsed via a Student Sustainability Committee application in spring 2023. The project group is interested in circularizing an element of the university's economy by investigating how campus organic waste can feasibly be converted to green hydrogen or natural gas. In order to do this, the project group will work with sources of food waste on campus (dining halls, cafes, restaurants) to profile their waste footprints, and utilize the group's independently-developed waste processing techniques to see how much hydrogen their process (and natural gas from other common processes) can produce.

Goals:

• Identify significant and suitable organic waste sources on the campus.
• Quantify and qualify the waste generated at these sources in terms of substrate type, frequency, and other relevant variables.
• Identify potential pilot bioreactor locations in the Urbana-Champaign or Campustown area which minimize total distance from aforementioned sources.
• Sample waste from aforementioned sources and measure their hydrogen yield using methodology.