Reclaiming cooking oil for a greener kitchen

The National Restaurant Association's annual trend survey of Professional Chefs identifies sustainability as one of the top trends to guide 2010 culinary thinking. No surprise there, the global concern of our precious natural resources has been on the focal point of our industry for years. Local foods with a smaller carbon footprint, sustainable fishing and farming, recycling and composting, and purposeful menus have all shared in the shaping of our chefs' collective environmental awakening. 

When we announced in 2007 that we eliminated trans fats in our food preparation, I wondered how we could tap into the small but growing Bio Diesel market. 5.5 million pounds of cooking oil is a conservative estimate of what our hotel and restaurant kitchens consume annually. Typically, the used oils are manufactured into animal feed or consumer products.  We prefer to direct these oils into a more sustainable platform, one that ultimately provides ecological benefits in line with our global green initiatives. 

Reclaiming 5.5 million pounds of used cooking oil will:

Produce 362,000 gallons of usable biofuel
Be the equivalent of planting 92,000 trees due to reduced CO2 emissions

Finding a reliable BioFuel company to partner in these efforts have been hindered by the lack of a nationwide or global presence. Greenlight Biofuels, a subsidiary of Greenlight Energy Resources based in Charlottesville, Virginia, is one of the  companies with the capability to service a multi-state area.  Greenlight now services the majority of the Washington, DC-area hotels and is providing a model for other regions to identify similar companies in other areas capable of the same service. Wherever the infrastructure allows, we will globally direct our used cooking oil to be reclaimed into the Bio Diesel system.

Our hotel kitchens pride themselves on being good stewards of their environment, with the attainable goal of reducing our carbon footprint to the lowest possible. Running a kitchen takes a lot of energy (both physically and environmentally). Stoves, refrigerators, daily deliveries, and shipping packaging account for the obvious energy burners, but there are many more hidden opportunities. Turning our used oil into non-fossil fuel is just one more thing we can do for the environment and cities in which we live, globally supporting our local communities. 

Comments

[Gary Lueck]

Chef,

Until a nation-wide supplier can be found, there are organizations in many of our large cities who are looking for dependable sources of used fryer oil to use as bio diesel. Craigslist is a great way to connect with them.

Thanks,
Gary

[Ben Prentice]

Chef,

While biodiesel is a reasonable start it is really not a very environmentally friendly solution overall. There is a beter-for-the-environment and more cost-effective for Marriott solution: the Vegawatt (www.vegawatt.com) cogeneration (CHP) system that uses your waste vegetable oil to create electricity and hot water right on-site for your properties, and the ROI is typically only 2-4 years.

FYI: Bio-diesel production utilizes Methanol (a petroleum product) and Lye (Sodium
Hydroxide, a hazardous caustic agent) to convert vegetable oil into a fuel similar
to diesel fuel. Up to 25% of a bio-diesel batch is converted to glycerine. While
glycerine is a common food sweetener, the glycerine produced from the biodiesel
process is contaminated with methanol and lye, and must be disposed of as a
hazardous waste, usually by burning.

Transportation of WVO for industrial production of bio-diesel is extensive and
expensive. Any oil traveling to a rendering plant may have already seen several hundred highway
miles and several middlemen before arriving for processing. This transportation
adds a significant amount to the oil’s (and thus your property's) overall carbon footprint, and should be included in any calculation of the oil’s original use cost.

After rendering, some oils are sold to bio-diesel producers, loaded back onto a
class 8 truck, averaging 4 miles per gallon of diesel fuel, and shipped to the
biodiesel plant where they undergo transesterfication into biodiesel. Additional
energy, along with large amounts of process chemicals are utilized to convert the
commodity oil into biodiesel. Glycerine, the waste product of the process, is
usually burned on-site contributing only combustion emissions to the air.

Once the bio-diesel is produced, it is loaded back onto a class 8 truck, again
burning diesel at a rate of 4 mpg, for transportation to wholesalers, who dilute
the biodiesel with petroleum diesel and then transport the fuel to retail stations.
The Rating system of B5, B10 and B20 represents the percent of biodiesel in the
blend, (5%, 10% and 20% respectively). Once the fuel finds its way into a vehicle’s
fuel tank, it is utilized in an engine that can only obtain 30 - 35% efficiency.

On the other hand-transportation of fuel for a Vegawatt system involves a kitchen worker and a
shortening shuttle or stock pot. The energy efficiency of a Vegawatt system is over 70%. The amount of energy embedded in transporting oil for a Vegawatt is less than that contained in
one French fry. There are no liquid wastes. Any solid food particles suspended in
the oil are caught in filters which at their end of life can be disposed of in an
ordinary dumpster.

To summarize total cycle costs, biodiesel has high transportation costs, high
embedded energy costs, a high carbon footprint, a reliance on petroleum as a
necessary process chemical, and a low end-use efficiency. In stark contrast, the
Vegawatt has zero embedded transportation cost, zero process chemicals and a
very high end-use efficiency.

[envirotub]

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