Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Engine

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 15 2009 (IPS) - The touristic city of Neochea, Argentina, is putting together a pioneering plan for the compulsory collection of used cooking oil from restaurants in order to produce biodiesel.

A municipality in Argentina has launched a program that requires restaurants and other food producers to hand over their used vegetable oils to be distilled into biodiesel, which will be used to run the city's vehicles and public transportation.

“We are preventing used cooking oil from reaching the sewers and contaminating water sources, saving fuel, creating environmental awareness and giving a project to a town that was dying,” summarizes Martín Issin, deputy secretary of production for the municipal government of Neochea and head of the Biodiesel Program that manages the collection, production and consumption of this renewable fuel.

Necochea, a tourist destination on the Atlantic coast, is 500 kilometers southeast of the Argentine capital, located in Buenos Aires province. In the summer it receives thousands of visitors, but the permanent population is about 100,000.

Necochea isn't the one that is “dying”, but rather the inland town of Ramón Santamarina, 65 kilometers away. The seemingly unstoppable desertion of the town led authorities to move the Agricultural School there.

The School was the site chosen for the municipal biodiesel processing plant, which reinvigorated life and activity in Ramón Santamarina.

“That's why we say this project has rescued productive potential and retained the rural population,” said Issin.

Argentina is the world's third leading producer of biodiesel, after Germany and the United States, with more than 1.4 million tons a year. But production is concentrated in the hands of a few companies dedicated to export, and does not supply local demand, which is set to increase beginning next year.

Argentina's 2006 biofuels law states that as of 2010 gasoil (petroleum-based fuel for diesel motors) must be mixed with at least five percent biodiesel (plant-based), which produces lower greenhouse emissions.

But experts fear it will be difficult to comply with the law because biodiesel producers prefer the more lucrative foreign market.

From when Necochea began its Biodiesel Program in 2004 to last year, plant-based cooking oil collection increased from 7.4 to 94.8 tons annually. “Collection is constantly increasing,” said a pleased Issin.

The town decreed in 2004 that all food establishments must register as suppliers of used vegetable oils and request the collection of this waste, in exchange for an identification decal placed in the window to show their participation.

Hotels, restaurants, factories and cafeterias are subject to inspections and fines from the Sanitation Directorate, which regulates what is put down the drains. Participation by individual households is voluntary.

The program today involves 700 businesses that provide used oil year round, and 3,000 more during the summer season. The cooking oil is collected by a city truck that itself runs only on biodiesel.

The authorities decided to include the re-use of empty agrochemical containers in the scheme. The otherwise polluting containers undergo a triple wash before being used in the process of collecting oil from the participating businesses.

“We are open all year, but the summer is when we work hardest. We have to call so they'll bring us more containers, because we end up with between 80 and 100 liters of oil per week,” said María Isabel García, owner of La Taberna Española restaurant.

“It's a success, because in Necochea now there are cars for hire that run on biodiesel,” she added.

Gustavo Aguirre, head of the Hereford restaurant, commented that the plan is “a solution and at the same time a service… The municipality sends us the containers and comes with the truck to take them away. It's good for us because we don't have to look for where to dispose of the oil.”

The oil is taken to the processing plant in Ramón Santamarina. There it is stored in a tank to be filtered. The organic waste is used for worm culture. The fluid oil is decanted and the water content is extracted.

Once the biodiesel has been with distilled, with methanol and caustic soda, the glycerol is separated out, a byproduct that can be used as raw material to make soap, according to Issin.

At the Agricultural School the town's only fuel pump has been installed, which supplies the school buses, the city's vehicles, and individual vehicles, including the cars for hire.

“We are in the self-supplying category because the volume doesn't allow us to sell it. But we can save on fuel for our fleet,” explained Issin. The municipal government has 70 vehicles, which run on mixtures of 50 percent to 100 percent biodiesel.

Two buses from a Necochea public transportation company gave a six-month test run, using a mixture of 20 percent biodiesel, with “excellent” results, he said.

The town's production office presented the program to the Argentine Carbon Fund, run by the national Environment Agency to facilitate investment in energy efficiency and development of renewable energy sources.

With Fund certification, the program could have access to financing under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, intended to mitigate production of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

With that prospect, the plant, which now employs five people, could be expanded.

The pioneer project motivated the government of Buenos Aires province in 2007 to launch Plan Bio, through which a couple dozen non-governmental organizations collect used cooking oil, free of charge, and sell it to private refineries at market prices. The income generated is used by those groups to finance their social campaigns.