Waste oil could be a valuable energy resource. However, lax policy around the handling of the resource gives it the least possible value on the market. If restaurants paid more attention to the handling of waste oil, the resource could become a commodity rather than a liability.

A little over a year ago, the Washington Technology Center’s Northwest Energy Technology Collaborative received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a one-year demonstration project involving the production, sale and use of biodiesel fuel. Known as the Bio-Diesel 49 Degrees Border Project or “Bio49,” the project is a test bed for regional energy technology, entrepreneurship and education.

In a nutshell, Bio49 involved setting up a small biodiesel refinery at Bellingham Technical College using equipment procured from local start-up Biodiesel Works LLC; training students to produce the fuel; selling this fuel to two major utilities — Puget Sound Energy in Washington and BC Hydro in Vancouver, B.C. — and having the utilities test various blends of the biofuel in their vehicles.

The mission of Bio49 is multi-fold: help local energy businesses; provide real-world workforce training in a new energy market; and test the effectiveness of biodiesel fuel in commercial vehicles as a means to reduce toxic emissions without sacrificing performance.  

The project recently celebrated a major milestone: the certification of 160 gallons of its biodiesel by the American Society of Testing and Materials. This may seem like a small achievement under the program’s grand goals. But it was actually very significant, not in volume or sales, but in lessons learned.

Throughout the year-long project, there were a number of successes and challenges. However, three issues emerged as the most pervasive: a lack of best practices in permitting and safety regulations surrounding biodiesel refineries; a tightly controlled market with strict contracts in place that make donating waste oil difficult; and most importantly, the haphazard handling of waste grease.

It would seem that gathering waste oil for biodiesel production would be easy, but it’s actually quite complicated. The purity of the base material directly correlates to the ease in which the product is manufactured and certified. In turn, this drives the price and value of the waste grease as a base product in biofuel production. 

What it comes down to is a simple case of supply and demand. On the demand side, both BC Hydro and Puget Sound Energy reported no performance problems with the fuel.

Originally, there were concerns that the purer blends (B20 and higher) would run into sludging issues during the cold weather. However, since both utilities routinely use block heaters for their diesel engines, it was not an issue. Even the truck tested on B100 didn’t report any problems with sludging during cold weather. 

Furthermore, with Washington's current 99 cents-per-gallon tax credit for alternative fuels, it is actually more affordable for the utilities to run vehicles on biodiesel ($2.94 per gallon) versus diesel ($3.25 per gallon). And beyond affordability, the real benefit of running trucks on biofuels is better air quality. In addition, biodiesel presents a low safety risk due to the properties of the fuel, which allows it to quickly dissipate and biodegrade with little or no long-term impacts from accidental spills.  

However, things on the supply side are not so rosy. In general, businesses that produce waste oil, such as restaurants and food processing companies, don’t take a lot of care in handling the product. Vegetable oils are mixed together with other oleos that contain animal fat. This “yellow oil” does have minor value as an energy product, and it's often sold overseas to countries like China. For biodiesel, the complicated process of trying to separate or purify the oil, which requires “washing” the product with additives such as sulfuric acid to burn off the animal fat, slows down production and adds cost.

If restaurants took a little extra care in handling the product, they could create a new revenue stream instead of being burdened with having to pay disposal costs for the grease. For the most part, it’s a matter of training.

Think garbage recycling. It took some time for consumers and businesses to set up recycling programs and get into the practice of separating trash from recyclable materials. Now it’s almost second nature, and it comes with both a feel-good sense about contributing to environmental health and a tangible economic benefit.

If cities and states imposed similar regulations and incentives on waste oil disposal, an instant market for a formerly undervalued product would be created. It’s a win-win-win situation. Restaurants and food processors would have a value-added product. Biodiesel refineries could receive a more pristine product (like the difference between sweet and heavy crude oil), and they could save time and money through simpler production. In addition, the public would gain a new energy source from its penchant for fast food.

As we move into a future in which better management of our energy consumption will play a larger role, we need to act now to set higher standards for the resources we do have. This will allow us to move forward as efficiently as the engines inside our biodiesel-fueled hybrid vehicles.