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.
