Filta Group Articles

As humanity becomes more conscious of its impact on the environment, there is a greater push to reduce waste and to recycle.  Though the trend to reuse may have only just picked up significant social steam, waste oil has been reused for years now.  Waste oil from restaurants and other commercial kitchen has long been used in animal feed and as bio fuel for a large number of commercial applications.

However, in more recent years, waste oil has found a new use as bio diesel.  As the movement toward finding more environmentally friendly fuel sources has taken stronger root, waste oil has begun being used to power vehicles.  An ever growing number of waste oil fueled, converted diesel automobiles are beginning to make use of what the restaurant industry produces and discards on a daily basis.

There are a number of benefits to using bio diesel, both for the environment and for the motorists who drive bio diesel powered vehicles.  Bio diesel is environmentally friendly, burning much more cleanly than traditional fuel (and making better smelling exhaust, to boot).  The cleanliness and renewability is good for the planet, the ready availability of free fuel is great for motorists.

Recycled vegetable oil, when used as a fuel to power converted diesel engines produces no SO2 and significantly lesser amount of CO and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons than traditional diesel.  SO2, a natural product of burning traditional diesel is the chemical substance responsible for acid rain.  The cleaner burning bio diesels are simply better for us, better for the planet and better for our future.
Bio diesel offers more than just a way to reduce pollution though.  Because the waste oil that is used is a natural product of the food-service economy within industrialized countries such as the U.S. it is a readily renewable resource.  In fact, its production contributes directly to the economic wellbeing of the country while reducing the nation’s reliance on foreign oil resources.

Increased use of vegetable oil helps more than just restaurateurs, as well.  According the U.S. Department of Agriculture a simple increase of 200 million gallons of vegetable oil use in the United States would have major implications in the agricultural community also by injecting an additional $300 million in revenue into the agricultural economy.

The use of bio fuels has already become popularized at the pump.  In many cases it is used to augment and supplement standard fuel.  In other instances it is used in and of itself.  However, the rise in the number of vehicles that have been converted to run on used waste oil has created even further reaching implications for the use of vegetable oils as a viable fuel source.

Almost any automobile with a diesel engine can be cheaply altered to operate on used waste oil.  Converted vehicles must still utilize traditional diesel fuels (for now) during a warm up and cool down period, but are able to drive on filtered used oil or on clean, fresh vegetable oil.  The mileage gotten on vegetable oil is comparable, and in many cases is better, than that gotten by use of diesel fuel.

Still, the process required to convert a diesel vehicle to run on waste oil, as well as the process for filtering waste oil to make it useable as fuel makes it impractical for many people.  Nevertheless, this advancement bodes well for future developments in the use of vegetable oil as an alternative fuel source.