Biodiesel from grease interceptor to gas tank

Abstract

Over the last decade the sustainable conversion of bioresources to biofuels has become a global pursuit that is being tailored to regional resources and local needs [1, 2]. Today’s biofuel successes are often contingent on using abundant and productive starch-and sucrose-based crops that has been challenged on “food-or-fuel” concerns which will only increase in the future as the global population grows [3, 4]. Key commercial breakthroughs in replacing significant amounts of petroleum-based fuels with renewable, nonfood bioresources, will come from translational research directed at reducing the recalcitrance of lignocellulosics for sustainable 2nd and 3rd generation biofuels [5] and overcoming the barriers to algae-derived biofuels [6] with positive life-cycle assessment (LCA) performance parameters. While these efforts are continuing to accelerate with technical issues being addressed, smaller successes also continue to evolve. For example, the recovery of yellow grease from commercial cooking facilities is a well-documented success in which spent fryer oil, containing a mixture of plant and animal fats, is stored, collected, and then transported to a central process site in which it is purified and transesterified to biodiesel (see Fig. 1) [7].