VANCOUVER, Wash. – Its first nickname was R2D2, after the “Star Wars” robot, but now they just call it “the dog” when it’s time to drain the grease at Burgerville USA.
“The dog” is a small, stainless steel tank and pump combination on wheels that the Northwest restaurant chain has pioneered to send used cooking oil to a biodiesel producer.
“It’s the wave of the future,” said Chris Wurtz, a Burgerville manager who demonstrated the dog at a new restaurant at the junction of I-5 and I-205 in Vancouver.
With the price of crude oil soaring, the restaurant industry could make a major contribution to the fuel supply if most of its waste cooking oil can be recycled into biodiesel, experts say.
“It really does hold long-term benefits, not only for the restaurant industry, but for the environment on a national basis,” said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association.
At the Burgerville restaurant, Wurtz towed the dog to the deep fryer, opened a steel cabinet door, turned a valve and started the oil flowing into a tank. When he had a big enough sample, he towed the pump to the back of the restaurant to transfer the used cooking oil into a stainless steel holding tank.
The big tank is fitted with a hose coupling that feeds through the back wall, where a truck from MRP Services, a family-owned plumbing and drain service company, can drain the tank.
MRP takes the oil to SeQuential Biofuels across the Columbia River in Portland, Ore., where it is converted into biodiesel.
The arrangement saves Burgerville the cost of hauling away the grease, but it is expected to eventually bring in additional revenue as biodiesel producers develop a market for biodiesel.
“It’s a win-win situation for both the restaurant operator, who now has another viable option for the disposal of old oil, as well as the general public, who benefit from energy conservation and energy source options,” Riehle said.
Used vegetable oil traditionally has been hauled off to a rendering company to be made into pet food, soaps or cosmetics.
“For us it’s a straightforward proposition,” said Jeff Harvey, chief operating officer of Holland Inc., parent company of the chain of 39 Burgerville restaurants.
“Waste oil is the largest byproduct of our business, and we use that byproduct to make something of value,” Harvey said.
Burgerville restaurants produce about 7,500 gallons of oil a month that can be turned into 6,400 gallons of biodiesel, company officials said.
The conversion also avoids much of the cost of transport because biodiesel can be produced locally, as other potential biodiesel users and producers have discovered, including Salem, Ore.-based Kettle Foods Inc., which makes potato chips.
“We power three company vehicles, Volkswagen Beetles, with diesel engines we call ‘BioBeetles’ – our own little fleet,” said Jim Green, a Kettle Foods spokesman.
“We’ve gotten real good in reusing our oil and not having as much waste, but all of our waste does go to be processed into biodiesel,” Green said.
Carlo Luri, biofuels manager for Bently Agrowdynamics in Minden, Nev., said the amount of cooking oil used every year averages about 10 gallons for each American. He said recapturing half that amount of oil could trim conventional diesel fuel consumption by up to 2 percent nationally, and also cut down on pollution. Diesel fuel accounts for about 24 percent of oil refinery production nationally, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
In California, the Orange County Sanitation District is taking the recycling process a step further by recovering grease from sewer systems and traps. But the district would like to develop a system that keeps the grease out of the sewer system altogether.
“We look at it like renewable fuel, if we can get it out of the sewer and get it into the market,” said Nick Arhontes, the engineer who directs regional services for the Southern California agency.
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