San Francisco Plans The City’s First Grease-To-Biodiesel Plant
Biodiesel lovers of San Francisco, rejoice. Starting next Winter, you might not have as much competition when you scour the back alleys behind Chinese restaurants trying to get your car fuel fix.
That’s because the city has just received a $1 million dollar grant from the California Energy Commission to build San Francisco’s first grease-to-biodiesel production facility.
Instead of using the more popular “yellow grease”—fryer oil— the production facility will make use of “brown grease”, or pan scrapings and oil residue trapped in grease interceptors under a restaurant sink. In the past, brown grease has been discarded at sewage plants. Now San Francisco wants to make use of the more than 2.5 million gallons of the stuff that’s in the city.
The plant will refine the grease into 3 grades of biodiesel that can be used to run vehicles, serve electrical and heating needs, and run sewage treatment plant diesel turbines and pumps.
Hopefully, the new effort will help cover the one billion gallon shortfall of biodiesel in California that is anticipated by 2022, since there is nearly twice as much brown grease in the city as yellow grease.
According to Mayor Gavin Newsom, the brown-grease-to-biodiesel plant, scheduled to be completed in December 2008, will “break new ground for sustainable fuel production in California and serve as a model for the entire state.”
And with biofuel prices in San Francisco currently at $5.52/gal, alternatives are sorely needed.
Awesome news! Ah, San Francisco, my old home, glad to see you continue to innovate. Gavin Newsom has been such a pleasant surprise. From being an expected Willie Brown puppet to standing strong for a lot of great things, he’s been quite boost for San Francisco.
I agree - and I’m proud to say I live in such an innovative city.
Thanks for covering this Ariel! Great story…
Very interesting.
If the economics don’t work, recycling and sustainable efforts won’t either.
Check http://LivePaths.com a blog about innovative entrepreneurs that make money selling recycled items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources. These include some very cool Green online ventures, great new technologies, startups and investments opportunities.
With this economy we need good ideas like this around each state.
It’s about time. Sorry to say but out here in Texas we’ve been doing this for over 12 years. Even Willie Nelson is in the business of Bio Fuels. Is this the same innovated city that gave the homeless shopping carts? That’s great that my old hometown is doing something right.
we are doing something similar in brazil. a combined renewable energy production from urban sewage in the largest waste water treatment plant in latin america. we are making biogas, biodiesel and bio oil. well done California!
I think it is great that my old city is getting on the right track with biodiesel. Start small, do it right, and then scale-up!