As Oil Prices Soar, Restaurant Grease Thefts Rise

[CatWoman]

The bandit pulled his truck to the back of a Burger King in Northern California one afternoon last month armed with a hose and a tank. After rummaging around assorted restaurant rubbish, he dunked a tube into a smelly storage bin and, the police said, vacuumed out about 300 gallons of grease.

The man was caught before he could slip away. In his truck, the police found 2,500 gallons of used fryer grease, indicating that the Burger King had not been his first fast-food craving of the day.

Outside Seattle, cooking oil rustling has become such a problem that the owners of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Wash., are considering using a surveillance camera to keep watch on its 50-gallon grease barrel. Nick Damianidis, an owner, said the barrel had been hit seven or eight times since last summer by siphoners who strike in the night.

“Fryer grease has become gold,” Mr. Damianidis said. “And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.”

Much to the surprise of Mr. Damianidis and many other people, processed fryer oil, which is called yellow grease, is actually not trash. The grease is traded on the booming commodities market. Its value has increased in recent months to historic highs, driven by the even higher prices of gas and ethanol, making it an ever more popular form of biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/us/30grease.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

[Newsjock]

1. 'Kentucky Fried Movie' apparently had it right

http://youtube.com/watch?v=N9mntfkBbTY

[hadrons]

2. Seriously, I hear it works well, but your car will smells of French Fries ....

which can or can't be a good thing

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Not True

If one uses oil directly in a diesel engine (it's not close to volatile enough for a gas engine), the combustion to CO2 and water is only about 90% complete. The problem is the natural oils release an organic compound called acrolein. This is a propyl aldehyde, which is very close to formaldehyde in both odor and toxicity.

So, real biodiesel requires the oil be transesterified into a methyl ester. Then it can be mixed with diesel, or used as is, and the glycerin backbone of the oil is no longer present. That functional group, being absent, prevents the acrolein from being formed.

But, once you've undergone transesterification, the esters won't smell like anything cooked in them.

Now, don't get me wrong: A diesel engine would burn fryer grease. But, it's emissions would be highly toxic.
The Professor

[juno jones]

3. Our restaurant was actually approached by construction contractors to take our fryer oil.

They wanted us to sign a contract that we would give our oil only to them for the next 6mos, year or similar (we only generate about 7 gallons a week). They were persistent enough to piss off my bosses and within a week I convinced them to locate a local farm using biodiesel to donate the oil to them. It was kind of a provident thing, as we are now also getting veggies and the best salad greens I have ever tasted from said farm.