Sludge Watch ==> Philadelphia - biodiesel out of restaurant gunk "Fry-o-Diesel"

[Maureen Reilly]

Posted on Fri, Jun. 15, 2007 email thisprint thisreprint or license thisNew 
fuel from nasty gunkFrom nasty, stinky goop of restaurant waste, called 
“trap grease,” a Phila. firm has created a biodiesel innovation.
By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer

Emily Landsburg of Philadelphia Fry-O-Diesel with a jar of usable fuel, 
processed from trap grease. The beauty of the fuel is that the raw gunk has 
no other use.


On the Web: Biodiesel Now: Blogs, forums links

Of all the raw sources of experimental "green" energy, the stuff that comes 
into a tiny Kensington plant is perhaps the nastiest: a brown sludge clotted 
with food and other goo you really don't want to know about, laced with 
grease.
A few treatment tanks and chemical processes later, out comes a strange 
brew, indeed. It is clear and smells slightly herbal.

The latest biodiesel innovation - processed restaurant "trap grease" - keeps 
Cory Suter's white Volkswagen pickup running. Likewise, the Krapf buses for 
the Great Valley school district, all normal diesel vehicles.

Fry-o-Diesel is made not from Midwestern soybeans or fryer grease, but from 
perhaps the most challenging, stinkiest stuff of all: the contents of 
restaurant tanks that collect whatever goes down the sink, dishwasher, and 
floor drains.

Philadelphia Fry-o-Diesel L.L.C. last month became one of the first 
companies in the United States to make trap-grease fuel that meets national 
standards. To celebrate, some of the vehicles in its test fleet of 40 will 
meet today at the Philadelphia Zoo, which also uses the fuel, to go for a 
brief drive.

Demand for biodiesel has tripled in each of the last three years, said Jenna 
Higgins, a spokeswoman for the National Biodiesel Board. "We're going to 
need biodiesel made from all types of materials to help meet the rising 
demand."

Technically, biodiesel can be made from any fat or vegetable oil. But making 
it cost-effective is the big challenge.

The beauty of Fry-o-Diesel is that trap grease has no other use. While used 
fryer grease costs about $1 a gallon, Philadelphia Fry-o-Diesel gets trap 
grease for free.

It's trapped in the first place to prevent clogging sewer lines. Indeed, the 
pollutant is costly to dispose of - usually at a wastewater-treatment plant, 
where it is incinerated.

Bruce Critchlow, operations manager for McGovern Inc., a sanitation and 
septic company in Kennett Square, said only two facilities in the region 
would accept it, and they charge 8 to 10 cents a gallon - $80 to $100 for 
the typical restaurant grease trap.

The quest for Fry-o-Diesel began about five years ago.

The Energy Cooperative, a nonprofit regional energy supplier, was looking 
for a source of biodiesel for home-heating oil. The closest production 
facility was in Ohio.

Trucking it that far made no sense if the idea was to be environmentally 
friendly. So they thought about making their own.

"We did a quick scan of Philadelphia. No soybeans," joked Nadia Adawi, 
president of for-profit Fry-o-Diesel and operations director at the Energy 
Cooperative, its parent.

A National Renewable Energy Lab study about restaurant trap grease perked 
them up. Based on the data, Adawi's group estimated that food facilities in 
the land of the cheesesteak produced 10 million gallons of grease a year.

"We were too stupid to be scared," Adawi said.

With a $369,696 grant from the state, they moved into an old gasket factory 
in Kensington and got to work.

Amid a tangle of one-way streets, the space - shared with a defunct printing 
press and equipment for a die-making business - was almost as funky as the 
grease.

The first problem was separating the grease from the other gunk. Its content 
varied widely, depending on its source and age.

Half-jokingly, the team can tell you where the grease comes from. Rice? 
Probably Chinese. Olive oil? Italian. (They've also found condoms and crack 
vials.)

The big hurdle was designing a process that would work on anything that went 
down the drain. Trap grease is different from fryer grease or soybean oil, 
which converts more easily to fuel.

The group teamed up with the U.S. Agriculture Department's Eastern Regional 
Research Center in Wyndmoor to work out the chemistry.

Center research chemist Michael Haas figured that one of the biggest 
challenges - "other than being grossed out" - would be coming up with a 
quality fuel. "It's really easy to make bad biodiesel."

They now have a multi-tank operation: The stuff is first run through 
separators to remove water and grit, leaving only grease. Next, unspecified 
catalysts - they've applied for a patent - are mixed in to convert the fat 
into fuel.

Three weeks ago, after an independent testing lab reported the fuel met the 
required specs, plant operator Steve Kasprzyk siphoned fuel from a barrel 
and poured it into the tank of his silver 2002 Volkswagen Jetta.

"It's been running great," said Kasprzyk, who is now on his third tank and 
getting 40-plus miles a gallon.

The test fleet is using a 20 percent blend of Fry-o-Diesel through June. One 
of the volunteers is Cory Suter. He figures it fits the mission of his small 
Philadelphia remodeling company, BioNeighbors Sustainable Homes.

Later this summer, Philadelphia Fry-o-Diesel plans to form a coalition of 
restaurants that commit to sending in their trap grease.

"We're trying to make this a community project," said Emily Bockian 
Landsburg, the company's manager of business development. On energy security 
and global warming, she said: "We all have a part to play."

They hope to have a commercial-scale plant making three million gallons of 
Fry-o-Diesel a year by mid-2008.



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