The UIUC Biodiesel Initiative (or Illinois Biodiesel Initiative) is a project that evolved from Engineers Without Borders and has collected Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) from dining halls on campus in order to convert it to biodiesel fuel. This fuel has been used by campus vehicles at the Facilities & Services (F&S) Garage and Car Pool since spring of 2006.  

The team designed a 400 gallon batch biodiesel processor at the Illinois Sustainable Techology Center (ISTC), which allowed them to process all of the available WVO on campus (around 300 gallons per week). Funding to build this processor came from the Student Sustainability Committee, the Cozad Design Competition, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the Engineering Design Council. As of 2012, the organization was asked to relocate from ISTC and has since been working with several campus stakeholders to restart operations. 

The organization has been donated two 50 gallon BioPro 190 biodiesel reactors for smaller batch scale production, as well as working to negotiate use of upcoming pilot plant space at the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory (IBRL) in the summer of 2016.

Currently, the project is focused on the following efforts:

•  A business pitch to the IBRL to guarantee pilot plant space
•  Finding a faculty adviser to ensure project continuity
•  Obtaining finances from old RSO funds and grant money allocated by the SSC to buy necessary equipment and materials
•  Raw materials acquisition (waste cooking oil and methanol for processing) and end-use agreements for products
•  Renewed process design for continuous biodiesel production
•  Working with the donated BioPro 190 biodiesel reactors and old soap equipment for student involvement until IBRL
•  Working out operations, logistics, and product testing for both biodiesel and the soap byproduct
•  Reclaiming old equipment from ISTC, as well as using the Energy Farm as intermediate storage space 
•  Marketing, brand development, University relations, and student recruitment in the fall and spring