Cooking Grease is Big Business as Gas Prices Soar

Don’t you wish you would have been one of those ‘weirdos’ who outfitted your diesel-engine car to use biofuels? Years ago, when people first started gathering used cooking oil from restaurants to fuel their vehicles, news of it was greeted by the public with amazement and more than a little scorn. After all, gas was still less than $2 a gallon and most people seemed to think we’d never run out. Well, who’s laughing now, bitches? Cooking grease is turning into a booming industry of its own, and the folks who are no longer dependent on petroleum are breathing a big ‘ol sigh of relief as the rest of the population worries about gas prices.

The Chicago Tribune has it:

Restaurants increasingly are being paid for their used cooking oil, icky stuff that historically they’ve had to pay to have hauled away. And sales of kits that allow diesel-powered cars to run on used cooking oil are soaring.

With all the attention, rendering firms are reporting a surge in grease thefts.

Grease’s rising star stems from rising energy prices. Demand for biodiesel is soaring, putting pressure on supplies of used vegetable oil, which can be used to make the alternative fuel.

Restaurants are getting into profit-sharing programs with companies that haul their raw used cooking oil away. Companies that make kits that convert diesel vehicles to burn straight vegetable oil are making money, too – one company, Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems in Massachusetts, expects to double their sales this year and are having trouble keeping up with demand.

Some drivers are still hitting up restaurants themselves to get oil for free and running it through filters to catch stray bits of food before putting it in their fuel tanks. Many, it seems, are also going the route of theft, making the business even more competitive. This cooking grease boom just goes to show that when they’re pinched, people get creative. Let’s see more of it!

Link [The Chicago Tribune]
Photo credit: Flickr user jsbarrie

Aarrrr! ‘Biodiesel Pirates’ Stealing Used Cooking Oil

Green business owners hoping to make money off used cooking oil to fuel vehicles have had a frustrating problem lately: ‘biodiesel pirates’ have been stealing their oil. As the price of gas rises ever higher, and many commuters find that their local mass transit systems aren’t so great, people are getting more and more desperate.

From MSNBC:

A few years ago, drums of used french fry grease were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers, who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes.

Now, restaurants from Berkeley, Calif., to Sedgwick, Kan., are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills.

“It’s like a war zone going on right now over grease,” said David Levenson, who owns a grease hauling business in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We’re seeing more and more people stealing grease because it lets them stay away from the pump, but it’s hurting our bottom line.”

Drivers for Blue Sky Bio-Fuels, a grease hauler that also manufactures biodiesel for San Francisco’s municipal program, often find the 300-gallon dumpster they store outside the Oakland Coliseum nearly dry, despite the dozens of concessions stands that regularly dump their oil there. Losses at that one site alone have cost the company $3,700 in foregone oil revenues in the last year, said Wesley Caddell, the Oakland firm’s business developer.

Sounds like some improved locks are in order. It seems like it was only a matter of time before people started realizing that used cooking oil was pretty easy to come by, and a lot of folks have come to expect that they can help themselves to it when it’s unsecured outside restaurants. If you want to make money off of it, you’ve got to protect it from thieves, people. Unfortunately, even ‘green’ folks can be dishonest.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user Per Ola Wiberg

Tactical Biorefineries Head To Iraq To Make Fuel From Trash

Remember Mr. Fusion from the Back To The Future movie? Doc Brown would throw cans, old shoes, banana peels, and anything else into the device which would then produce fuel to zoom around time and space. Well, the military isn’t quite pulling a Marty McFly on us yet, but their new “tactical biorefineries” are one step closer to producing a closed-loop system for waste. Specifically, the massive amounts of waste created by our armed forces. From the article,

The Army’s two prototypes of the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery, or TGER, are shipping out to Victory Base Camp in Baghdad today for a 90 day test of the units under extreme working conditions. The refineries, which can take in food slop, plastic, paper and styrofoam and output synthetic gas or hydrous ethanol, were developed by McLean, Va.-based defense contractor Defense Life Sciences, Purdue University and the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland.

Instead of being burned, the items inside the machine (after being broken down) are heated and turned into a low-grad propane. Organic materials get converted into a hydrous ethanol. Both streams are then blended together to run a standard Army 60KW generator. Each machine can handle roughly one ton of garbage per day and fits into standard ISO containers for easy transport.

If these initial test prove successful, expect the “Tigers” to be mass-produced and become a standard accessory for military divisions around the globe. Doc would be proud.

Link [CleanTech]