COST DOWN FOR FREEHOLD BOROUGH - Part 1

Cooking Oil Could Power Jersey Town's Plows
When a Westwood, N.J., snowplow rumbles down borough streets next winter, it may leave behind a whiff of doughnuts or french fries, but not from snacking by the crew.
The borough is planning to experiment with converting public works trucks to run on biodiesel fuel. Its source? Oil that local restaurants use to fry their customers' breakfasts, lunches and dinners. The project is the brainchild of Borough Administrator Bob Hoffmann and Councilman Gary Conkling, a longtime auto mechanic who said he has seen the success of biodiesel fuel.
The council recently gave a unanimous thumbs up for the "veggie truck" plan. Conkling and Hoffmann are working to get it off the ground, starting with one public works truck and expanding to other diesel trucks if the conversion works well. "If we can get the restaurants in town to donate used vegetable oil, we can get our vehicles to run on it," Conkling said. "You are taking old vegetable oil that they cooked with and burning it in the diesel engine. It really works. It will save us a lot of money on gas and fuel. It also doesn't pollute the air as much as regular fuel does."
Once some restaurants agree to dish out their used oil, the borough needs to purchase and install the conversion apparatus to refine the oil on the diesel truck that will be used in the experiment, Conkling said.
The apparatus costs anywhere from $800 to $2,500, according to industry experts.
Hoffmann said the greener fuel will not only cut costs for the borough, it will also help restaurants rid themselves of an undesirable byproduct. "Usually they have to have their grease byproducts hauled away in a tanker truck," he said.
Mayor Thomas Wanner said there are no projected figures on how much the borough will save, but the project "should help in making us more environmentally conscious, and increase local french fry sales, with the associated aromatic exhaust."
Biodiesel can be made from used or unused vegetable oils, such as soy, sunflower, canola, coconut and hemp. Even animal fats such as beef tallow and fish oil can be used to make biodiesel fuel. Its use dates back more than 100 years to the invention of the diesel engine by Rudolf Diesel, whose first engines ran on peanut oil. With prices at the pump soaring, the idea is having a revival.
Among the advantages biodiesel offers is that it reduces carbon dioxide emissions, is made domestically and does not pollute the environment. It also does not require any diesel engine modifications. Hoffmann said he's heard of this system being used in Europe and got the idea from reading an account of a car owner who opted to run his vehicle on his own used vegetable oil. "There's no reason it can't be done here. We need to do a better job in recapturing waste."
At least one local restaurateur said he's on board. "Our garbage could be fueling the borough trucks. I wouldn't need to recycle my old oil. How great would that be?" said Lee Tremble, owner of the Iron Horse Restaurant, who notes that it costs roughly $25 a barrel to recycle the oil..... FROM http://www.snowmagazineonline.com/