Thomko Petro Chemical Blog

SAN FRANCISCO - A few years ago, drums of used French fry grease were of interest only 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, California., to Sedgwick, Kansas., are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars to rustlers who refine it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills.

Some say it's like a war going on right now over used grease. More people are stealing grease because they have converted their cars to run on grease collected from local area restaurants.

Grease is transformed into fuel through a chemical process called transesterification, which removes glycerine and adds methanol to the oil, leaving a thinner product that can power a diesel engine.

Biodiesel can also be blended with petroleum diesel, and blends of the alternative fuel are now sold at 1,400 gas stations across the country.

As the price of diesel soars ($4.79 currently in Northwest Indiana), so, too does the value of grease.

In three years, the price of soybean oil, the main feedstock for biodiesel made in the United States, has tripled. Last week, a gallon of crude soybean oil fetched 66 cents on the open market, according to the National Biodiesel Board.

Those numbers have encouraged biofuel enthusiasts to plunder restaurants' greasy waste, and have even spurred San Francisco to get into the grease-trap cleaning business.

Drivers for Blue Sky Bio-Fuels, which manufactures bio-diesel for San Francisco's municipal program, often find their 300-gallon Dumpster outside the Oakland Coliseum nearly dry, despite the dozens of concession stands that dump there. Losses there alone have cost $3,700 in lost oil revenues in the last year.

In Kansas, Healy Biodiesel reports thousands of dollars in losses from used cooking oil heists from restaurants near Sedgwick, about 20 miles north of Wichita.

Standard Biodiesel in Seattle started working with police to try to catch fly-by-night home-brewers pilfering up to 30,000 gallons of the oil they collect from restaurants every month.

To manufacture the renewable fuel legally, biodiesel producers must register with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Also, biodiesel consumers must pay the government taxes to help with road upkeep.
 

Source: Newsday