The fat from your favorite restaurant’s deep fryer offers more than fries. When businesses recycle their used oil with SeQuential, they contribute to the production of clean, sustainable, and efficient renewable fuel. Renewable fuel is a valuable fuel source made from soybean oil, animal fats, and other kinds of recycled cooking oil. It’s renewable, clean-burning, reduces waste, and is surprisingly easy to make. All that’s necessary is a simple chemical reaction. Learn how renewable fuel is made with SeQuential with an outline of the process used to transform kitchen grease into useable fuel.
It Starts with Used Cooking Oil
The first step of our renewable fuel process is the collection of used cooking oil. A large amount of oil comes from commercial fryers at local restaurants, food processors, and any business that serves food, as well as home kitchens. All kinds of cooking oil can be used, including soy, vegetable, canola, and animal fats.
The collection process is simple. Home cooking oil can simply be stored in its original container and taken to one of many convenient renewable fuel drop-off locations. Restaurants and businesses, on the other hand, can sign up for our free service and set up a collection schedule. For those who partner with SeQuential, we provide a durable storage container for used cooking oil and will empty it regularly at no cost.
Purification and Refinement
After used cooking oil is collected, the next step is refinement. Used oil is usually full of impurities, such as meat scraps, water, crumbs of breading, and other leftovers. These contaminants must be filtered out, so they don’t interfere with the conversion process.
Used cooking oil also contains a high amount of free fatty acids (FFAs). When you use oil repeatedly, the high heat starts to break down the molecules. Fatty acid particles detach from the rest of the molecule and start to float freely. These FFAs can’t be converted into renewable fuel directly. After filtering, used cooking oil is pre-treated to make the FFAs usable. Then, it’s ready to be turned into biofuel.
Understanding the Process
Used cooking oil is not a safe fuel by itself. In order to make it safe, cooking oil goes through a process a hydrotreatment process.
Neste uses a unique combination of hydrotreating and isomerization that enables a wide variety of low-quality waste and residues to be turned into high-quality fuels. During the process, hydrogen is used in the refining process to separate the molecules and remove oxygen from the fatty acids that make up the fuel’s completely renewable raw material base. The outcome is a renewable diesel with a similar chemical composition to fossil diesel.
Renewable diesel fuel comes in all kinds of blends. It can be used both neat (100% concentration), as well as blended in any ratio with other diesel fuels. Neste’s renewable fuel is the only renewable diesel in the US market that guarantees every gallon sold meets the ASTM D975 hydrocarbon diesel spec, as well as the EN 15940 paraffinic diesel spec required by most OEMs.
Switch to Renewable Fuel Today
Only a simple chemical process is necessary to transform used cooking oil into sustainable fuel. Compared to traditional diesel fuel, renewable fuel reduces greenhouse gases, smog, unhealthy air pollution, and waste. Best of all, it’s renewable. To learn more about renewable fuel or make the switch, contact SeQuential today. We’re one of the West Coast’s leading used oil collectors with locations in Salem, OR and Bakersfield, CA and serve most metro areas on the West coast.