There is a sign on the wall of Loyola University Chicago’s Searle Biodiesel Lab in Rogers Park that reads: “Loyola: Fueled by Fries.” It is a punchline, but it is also a precise description of what is happening inside this converted lab space on the university’s north campus — a place where used cooking oil donated by Chicago-area restaurants, museums, and dining halls gets processed, chemically transformed, and ultimately pumped into the buses that carry thousands of Loyola students and staff across the city every weekday.
The program has been running for nearly two decades. Most people who ride Loyola’s shuttle buses between the Lakeshore campus and the Water Tower campus downtown have no idea they are riding on recycled fryer grease. That, in its own way, is the point.
How the Lab Works
The environmentally-friendly biodiesel, produced at Loyola’s Searle Biodiesel Lab in Rogers Park, is made of vegetable oil instead of fossil fuels. The process also recycles waste from Chicago-area restaurants, museums, and other sources, including Loyola’s dining halls — and anyone can drop off used cooking oil at the lab.
The chemistry at the center of the operation is a process called transesterification. Used cooking oil arrives in jugs, bottles, and drums — from Loyola’s own cafeterias, from neighborhood restaurants, from institutions like the Shedd Aquarium, and from community members who deep-fried a turkey at Thanksgiving and need somewhere responsible to drop the oil. The lab filters out solids, runs the chemical reaction to remove the glycerin molecule, and cleans the resulting biodiesel with water. What comes out is a fuel ready for a diesel engine.
The lab annually produces about 8,000 gallons of biodiesel for Loyola’s eight buses, after processing around 9,000 gallons of used or expired cooking oil. The difference between input and output accounts for the filtering and processing waste, as well as the glycerin byproduct the lab captures separately.
That byproduct is not wasted either. Making biodiesel also creates glycerin as a byproduct — which the lab uses to produce approximately 1,500 gallons of hand soap found in all of Loyola’s restrooms. The lab also produced hand sanitizer during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when supply chains for those products were under significant strain.
The environmental math is clear. “Burning biodiesel releases less particulate matter — that plume of black soot coming from trucks and buses. Particulate matter is filtered out by our lungs and can lead to different breathing issues,” said Zach Waickman, the lab’s senior program manager. Biodiesel emits 50% to 80% less carbon than regular diesel.
For an urban university with a large commuter population and eight buses running between campuses daily, that reduction is not trivial.
A Class Project That Became a Campus Institution
The biodiesel program grew out of an undergraduate class project in 2007. Waickman was a student in the original class. The course was called Solutions to Environmental Problems, and over the years it has generated multiple lasting initiatives across Loyola’s campus — a bottled water ban, a farmers market, campus apiaries. The biodiesel program has lasted longer than any of them and grown into something that now operates as a self-sustaining campus business.
Waickman, who earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Loyola, now runs the lab as its senior program manager. He watched the original equipment — a small processor moved around by wagon — get replaced over the years as the program scaled. The Searle Biodiesel Lab was built in 2013 and now houses a fifth-generation biodiesel processor, a methanol recovery system, soap production equipment, and dedicated laboratory space for research and quality testing.
Eight to ten Loyola students work part-time there on paid internships, easing into roles of increasing responsibility over time. Students in the lab handle quality control testing, manage the biodiesel processor, maintain the soap production line, and take on research projects aimed at advancing the program. The work is technical — the lab uses industry-standard equipment and peer-reviewed testing procedures, cross-checking results against an external third-party lab for accuracy.
Aiden Geraty, a junior who has worked at the lab since October, noted what makes the experience different from typical coursework. He rides the university’s buses knowing he helps make them run. He washes his hands in Loyola’s bathrooms knowing he helped produce the soap in the dispenser. “It’s pretty gratifying that the work I’m doing is being used in a helpful way,” he said.
Recognition, Replication, and What the Lab Means for Chicago
In 2015, the lab won an EPA award as a Safer Choice Partner of the Year. Universities and high schools across the U.S. have sought the lab’s advice on similar projects.
Loyola is also notable for being the first and only school in the United States licensed to produce and sell biodiesel fuel to the general public. The lab sells fuel in bulk quantities — from 55 to 500 gallons — to outside buyers, and all applicable fuel taxes are paid, with the production process reviewed and audited for safety under the licensing agreement.
The program sits within Loyola’s School of Environmental Sustainability, which holds a Green Rating of 99 out of 99 from The Princeton Review’s 2026 Guide to Green Colleges. That rating reflects a broader institutional commitment: Loyola has invested $150 million in high-performance buildings and campus energy systems, committed to 100% renewable electricity, and embedded sustainability into its core undergraduate curriculum.
For Chicago, the Searle Biodiesel Lab represents something the city’s larger climate conversations often miss — the hyper-local circularity of sustainability done at neighborhood scale. The cooking oil comes from Rogers Park restaurants and Chicago institutions. Students from Chicago and surrounding communities do the work. The fuel runs buses through Chicago streets. The soap is used in Chicago campus restrooms. Nothing leaves the loop unnecessarily.
Waickman has described it as a zero-waste production process, and the numbers back that up. Nearly every input — the cooking oil, the methanol used in processing, the glycerin byproduct — is either converted into fuel, recovered for reuse, or transformed into a usable product. The lab’s work is a tangible illustration of the circular economy operating not as a concept but as a functioning operational system in a Rogers Park lab.
What Is Next
The lab is not standing still. Loyola students continue to pursue research into improving the production process, finding new applications for byproducts, and exploring ways to conserve energy within the lab itself. The program also serves as a resource center for other schools and small-scale biodiesel producers nationally.
Chicago has set ambitious goals around reducing carbon emissions and improving air quality, particularly in neighborhoods that have historically borne disproportionate pollution burdens from diesel-heavy vehicle traffic. Biodiesel is not a complete solution to either challenge, but Loyola’s lab demonstrates that institutions with willing students, creative faculty, and a commitment to follow-through can build something real and lasting from what would otherwise be kitchen waste.
The buses run every weekday. The soap dispenses every time someone washes their hands. And the used cooking oil keeps coming in.
