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22 comments on Cooking Oil to Biodiesel Programs in NYC
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This won't keep 800 million cars and trucks on the road. If the processing uses methanol it is still FF dependent. Filtered and dewatered waste vegetable oil can be mixed with solid feed to fatten cattle so there are competing uses. The day may come when restaurants charge for WVO or use it as a free waste disposal service by mixing in other wastes you don't want to think about.
Another thing to think about is widespread oilseed crop failures. Bugs like diamondback moth are developing resistance to everything. I'm a great fan of diesel (in this case methyl ester) but I think BTL diesel like the Choren process is the way to go. If only it had the help that corn ethanol gets.
Methanol is made from syngas, and it's not much of a stretch to use the glycerine byproduct (and a little bit of the waste oil) to produce all the required syngas.
Maybe not cheap enough at the moment, but that time will come.
The left over glycerine can be used to produce biogase, methane. This is being done in Sweden in reasonable scale.
The same goes for press cake from rapeseed oil production and leftovers from ethanol fermentation that is not needed as cattle feed. The only (so far) large scale ethanol plant in Sweden has been complemented by a biogas plant that uses chaff from the wheat before grinding and sludge after distillation for methane production.
I think biodiesel from waste oil has a great chance to be used for many of the critical municipal services that we need (as opposed to want). Fire, Sanitation, Police and Buses could be run on some mix of biodiesel. A big contract from the city to one of these producers would be a huge incentive to collect this waste and eventually pay higher prices for the waste. Just the gains from an air quality perspective would be worth the upfront investments.
I don't think it will take 800 million cars off fossil fuels, but it's a good start.