Out of the frying pan, into the diesel engines

As fuel prices soar, more firms save money by using bio-diesel made from waste cooking oil
Jessica Lim, Straits Times 4 Jun 08;

TO COPE with rising fuel prices, some companies are turning to waste cooking oil from restaurants to power their diesel vehicles and machinery.

About 500,000 litres of this bio-diesel courses through engines and industrial equipment here every month, enough to fill half an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Retailers said that demand had skyrocketed in the past year largely because the vegetable-based fuel is up to 20 per cent cheaper than petroleum-based diesel.

Diesel is now going for about $1.80 a litre.

Alpha Synovate, which produces about 20,000 litres of bio-diesel each month, collects the used, dark yellow cooking oil from restaurants across Singapore.

The oil then goes into stainless steel reactors and, with a little chemistry, about 80 per cent of it is converted into bio-diesel seven hours later.

Only vehicles powered by diesel engines, such as most vans, trucks, buses and a few diesel-powered cars here, can run on this fuel.

Vegetable oil is not flammable enough to work in petrol engines, which are spark-ignited. In diesel engines, however, air is compressed to the point where the fuel self-ignites.

Although the fuel cannot be used by all vehicles here, Alpha Synovate's chief executive Allan Lim has no shortage of customers, among whom are transport companies and private owners of diesel vehicles. He said that demand for bio-diesel had gone up with the joint rise in petrol and diesel prices.

Crude oil prices hit a record US$135 (S$183) a barrel two weeks ago, pushing pump prices up for the fifth time since March. The price of diesel shot up even more sharply than that of petrol, hitting $1.83 per litre at the pumps.

Bio-diesel, once popular with only a handful of committed environmentalists, has therefore won new fans among those looking to cushion themselves against rising transport costs.

Mr Lim said that owners of petrol-engine vehicles who want to use this biofuel have to convert their vehicles to diesel-engine ones, which is an expensive exercise.

The other snag is the relatively high taxes on diesel cars, which is why there are few such cars here.

Alpha Synovate plans to increase production to 200,000 litres by the end of the year to meet the increasing demand. The business is not profitable yet, but Mr Lim has high hopes for the future.

Already, the number of customers filling up at Alpha Synovate's mobile station in Simei has tripled in the last two years.

The other cooking oil recycler here, Biofuel Research, saw demand for its product go from nothing to 500,000 litres in the same amount of time.

Said its owner Kom Mam Sun: 'Industrial and transport companies can use lots of diesel. They can save up to $25,000 a month. When prices of oil went up, so did our business.'

Industry watchers think demand may soon outstrip supply. Singapore Environment Council chief Howard Shaw agreed, saying that it was unlikely that waste oil conversion would happen on a massive scale because 'there is a limited supply of waste cooking oil'.

Already, Biofuel Research is turning away at least two transport companies a week because it cannot collect enough waste oil.

The veggie-power movement is global. In Britain, several thousand people are thought to be running their cars on such fuel, made in their own backyards. In the United States, waste oil has become popular with thieves, who are trading it in for cash.

Meanwhile, those using this recycled fuel here are only too happy to count their savings. Bedok Transport, which operates a fleet of 70 buses and runs half of them on bio-diesel, saves about $700 monthly.

Its owner, Mr Lionel Lim, 28, said: 'It works the same as regular diesel and there is less soot when the buses start up. The only drawback is that it smells strange, like fried chicken.'