In an effort to both save money and help the environment, Jackson County is looking to fuel its fleet of school buses with biodiesel made at the Jackson County Green Energy Park.

While commercial biodiesel typically sells for up to 50 cents per gallon more than regular diesel, Jackson County may be able to make its own biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil at a substantial savings. But to do that, it needs help from local restaurants, commercial kitchens, food producers, and the general public, to collect enough waste vegetable oil to meet its fuel needs.

The used fryer oil problem

Most restaurants and commercial kitchens change their fryer oil at least once a week, or even daily. Over time, this can add up to a lot of used oil that has to be disposed of. Pouring it down the drain is a sure way to clog your pipes, and TWSA (our local wastewater treatment operator) frowns heavily against grease in the sewage. So any business that creates large quantities of used cooking oil generally collects it in a smelly bin out back and pays for an oil-collection company to come haul it away. Even home kitchens have a difficult job getting rid of used oil — can’t pour it down the drain, can’t dump it in the trash, and pouring it in the compost pile risks a night-time visit from the local raccoons or the neighbor’s dogs.

The biodiesel solution

Waste vegetable oil (as well as virgin vegetable oils, or even animal fat) can be converted into biodiesel — a clean-burning, non-toxic, renewable fuel that can be used in any diesel engine. Biodiesel burns much cleaner than normal petroleum diesel, with tailpipe pollutants reduced by 40 to 100 percent. And in pre-2007 vehicles, biodiesel can reduce engine wear by increasing the lubricity (slipperiness) of the fuel.

With the drastic rise in fuel costs that have affected all of us, Jackson County is looking for different ways to reduce our overall fuel expenditures. If the county can collect enough waste vegetable oil, we could offset a large portion of the diesel fuel that we currently purchase each year (roughly 80,000 gallons per year) with biodiesel that we make ourselves. This fuel would be used in county buses, vehicles, and heavy equipment only, and would not be available for retail sales.

Benefits to donors

By donating their used vegetable oil to the county, businesses can eliminate their oil-disposal costs and at the same time receive a tax deduction for a charitable contribution. For those producing large quantities of fryer oil each week, the county plans to remove the oil for free. The county will even provide new grease bins to store the oil in until it can be collected. Individuals or businesses with smaller amounts of used oil will be able to bring their oil to the Green Energy Park or to any of the county Staffed Recycling Centers, and still receive a tax credit.

Even more important to those of you who have school-age children is that by using biodiesel, we can dramatically improve the air quality inside our school buses. Several recent studies have shown pollution levels inside an operating school bus to be 4 to 8 times higher than pollutant levels outside the rear of the bus. The fine particles found in diesel exhaust have been proven to increase the likelihood of childhood asthma, while buses using biodiesel fuel emit 70 percent less of these same fine particulates.

To me — the father of a 6-year-old — that’s reason enough to find a way to get biodiesel into our school buses. But even if you’re not a parent, fewer cases of childhood asthma and other pollution-related illnesses means lower public health care costs. And that’s hard to argue with.

Where and when?

The county commissioners have approved funds to construct a small biodiesel production operation at the Jackson County Green Energy Park. This includes monies for production equipment, storage tanks, process chemicals, a collection truck, and a full-time process operator. However, none of these funds will be spent until after we are able to guarantee that we have enough waste vegetable oil available to make it worth our efforts. Assuming that we are able to secure enough waste oil, we will move towards producing biodiesel by the end of 2008.

We are consulting with Piedmont Biofuels, the National Biodiesel Board, and other biodiesel producers to ensure that both our equipment and our personnel training will be state-of-the-art. Our program will be modeled on the highly successful efforts in Gaston County, where they are producing 2,000 to 5,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel per week, at a cost of 95 cents per gallon. And we can take the program even a step further by using methane gas from the old Dillsboro landfill to provide the necessary process heat, further reducing our operating costs.

How can I participate?

Area restaurants, schools, colleges, and commercial kitchens will be contacted by the Green Energy Park in the coming month to see if they wish to participate in our waste oil collection program. Interested parties may also contact the GEP directly (828.631.0271) to sign up. Once the program is under way, collection drums will be placed at all of the County SRC’s so that citizens can conveniently dispose of their used cooking oil. Closed and labeled containers of used fryer oil can also be brought directly to the Green Energy Park.

For more information on biodiesel or on the Green Energy Park in general, visit our Web site at www.JCGEP.org.

(Timm Muth is the director of the Jackson County Green Energy Park.)