Waste Cooking Oil as a Fuel Alternative?
With the pull of an engine crank, experts will demonstrate how a renewable and widely available energy source could be used to help business operators save big bucks in energy costs.
The demonstration is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 10, at 10:30 a.m. at the Vinyard Technology facility in Hartford, located 305 West Main Street, Alabama Highway 52, a half mile east of Alabama Highway 167. Dr. Timothy McDonald, Auburn University associate professor of biosystems engineering, and Shannon Vinyard, president of Vinyard Technology Co., Inc., will demonstrate the system, showing how waste cooking oil can be used to generate electrical power and, in the process, supplement their energy needs.
Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs is sponsoring the program the program, and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, Auburn University’s Biosystems Engineering Department and Vinyard Technology, Inc., will be the hosts.
The system was designed to function as a “drop-in” technology, meaning that it involves no major equipment modifications. Moreover, reaping the system’s full benefits does not require operators to disconnect their facility from its existing power source or to install expensive phase-matching hardware.
“It’s promising because of its simplicity,” McDonald says. “You plug it into the wall and it pumps electricity into the system, offsetting what you’re currently paying your utility provider.”
Operating the system merely requires filling the tank of the customized diesel generator with cooking waste oil, cranking the engine and plugging in the generator. The end result is a system that supplies all or part of the electrical load in the form of a renewable, clean-burning agricultural waste product.
Moreover, McDonald says, operators are “doing their part for the environment by using an agricultural product as well as a renewable energy source.”
The one-hour program will begin at Vinyard Technologies facility, followed by a demonstration at Outlaw Farms’ poultry houses, located two miles east of Hartford.
In addition to the demonstration, the program will also cover troubleshooting, capital costs and energy savings associated with the technology.
“While the system offers great potential, costs savings depend on the availability of low-cost cooking oil,” says Vinyard.
In addition to the cooking oil system, Vinyard Technology will also highlight other technologies under development that operate off biofuels and other alternative fuel sources.
Waste cooking oil is one many different types of biofuels --- alternative energy sources that have garnered a lot of attention recently, due to mounting concerns over crude oil prices, coupled with the effects of global warming.
Biofuels essentially are any energy source derived from recently living organisms or their by-products. Wood is the most obvious example. Others, in addition to waste cooking oil, include soybean, peanut and cotton oil as well as poultry and cattle manure.
The biofuel product currently garnering the most interest is biodiesel, not only because of its appeal as an alternative to conventional petroleum-based diesel but because it produces fewer emissions when burned.
In Alabama, Regional Extension Agent Mark Hall has organized an educational initiative to raise public awareness about this farm-generated fuel. Hall believes biodiesel and other biofuels not only would contribute to a cleaner environment but could provide a major boost to Alabama’s farming economy.
Biodiesel production and sales already are doubling every year, according to the National Biodiesel Board, with roughly 1,400 petroleum distributors already carrying biodiesel and biodiesel blends.
The group estimates that sales of biodiesel totaled 25 million gallons in 2004. By the end of the year, it estimates there will be more than 100 million gallons in biodiesel capacity.
[Sources: Mark Hall, Regional Extension Agent, (256) 509-6113; Dr. Timothy P. McDonald, Auburn University Associate Professor of Biosystems Engineering, (334) 844-3545.]
Posted by Jim Langcuster at October 20, 2005 02:54 PM