City’s Grease-Power Plan Has Recycled 1 Million Gallons
Milbrae, a small city south of San Francisco, celebrated its millionth gallon of restaurant grease-to-biogas energy conversion today.
The city works with a private liquid disposal company to collect grease and gunk from nearby restaurants. The used oil is delivered and transferred into the Milbrae Water Pollution Control Plant’s 12,000-gallon tank, where microbes are added to the mix. The microbes consume the waste and release biogas, which in turn is burned to produce electricity. Even the excess heat is put to use heating water.
The process—which provides 1.7 kWh each year, or 80 percent of the power needed to run the plant—offset 1.2 million pounds of CO2 in the last year. The city says they would have needed to plant 166 trees to offset a comparable amount of greenhouse gas. “We’re extremely proud,” said Mayor Gina Papan. “It’s a fabulous program that really makes you realize what impact a single city can have in affecting the environment.”
Photo Credit: Pgoyette on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
Other Posts Relating to Grease Recycling:
- Biodiesel Boom Spurs Theft of Nasty, Used Fry-o-Later Grease
- Portland’s Grease Wars: Battling for Biodisel-Bound Cooking Oil
The revolution is beginning, even as the “Great Depression is in its opening stages. Next, we mine the landfills and then go after the tire dumps. A realization is upon the American consciousness! Our lives are about to undergo convulsive values changes. A paradigm shift is starting. When we plant a tree for every tree we kill, use semi-arable land for hemp crops, fertilized with irradiated sewage and harvested for bio-diesel and fiber, When we turn away from oil and create our own with algae, for use in high efficiency plug in hybrids made from hemp fiber in place of 1930’s sheet metal technology, when we prefer to sit with a drink in the lounge car of a train to fighting gridlock, when life slows down enough to accommodate our humanness, when the corporation rules are changed to make us number one and the bottom line is erased for all time, America will be great again.