Fryer Oil to Fuel Tank: How Cooking Oil Recycling in New Orleans, LA Fuels Your Car
Biofuel is becoming an increasingly popular way to power vehicles and equipment to reduce carbon emissions and improve fuel efficiency. One of the more popular methods of late is to take used cooling oil and recycle it for fueling purposes.
Approximately 10,000 tons of used cooking oil gets collected each year from food manufacturers, catering professionals and other types of businesses in France alone—just imagine the potential for this practice if it were to become more widespread in the United States. The used oil gets filtered and treated before it gets sent off to biofuel plants to be turned into biofuel. A single metric ton of used oil can result in 1,200 liters of biofuel.
There are many benefits to this practice, the biggest of which being that using recycled cooking oils in New Orleans, LA cuts down on the consumption of fossil fuels in the transportation sector, and also caps greenhouse gas emissions. A single liter of oil recycled into biofuel avoids emissions of 3 kg of carbon dioxide, which represents a 92 percent reduction of the gas compared to the use of standard diesel fuel.
The use of recycled cooking oil
Obviously, you can’t just put vegetable oil or chicken grease into your car and hope it will run well—this will destroy your engine in a hurry. Vegetable oil has a very high viscosity, and while it could technically power a vehicle in its pure form for at least a small amount of time, it would clog up the engine and result in the need for some frequent and significantly expensive repairs. So, obviously, it’s important to make sure you’re going through the proper processes to refine this fuel.
Biofuel must be properly processed from these types of sources before it can be used. It takes special facilities and processes to refine the fuel and ensure it follows all anti-pollution laws and fuel regulations. The fuel is then often used for vehicles with diesel engines, which are capable of running on biodiesel or a blend of petroleum diesel and biodiesel. In many cases, these vehicles don’t need to undergo much modification, if any, for the fuel adjustment to work.
This has been a big revelation for a global energy industry that is quickly realizing our fossil fuel supply is limited. There are also environmental activists who are pushing for the world to stop relying on fossil fuel usage because of the damage it’s doing to the planet and to the climate. More widespread adoption of these types of alternative fuel sources (including biofuel) could not just open up brand new business opportunities and create a new multitrillion dollar industry, but could also have some significant, potentially climate-saving effects.
If you’re interested in learning more about the process associated with refining recycled cooking oil in New Orleans, LA to the point where it can be effectively used as biofuel in diesel engines, we encourage you to contact the team at Safeway Used Oil and Grease today and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.
Categorised in: Oil Recycle