As U.K. diesel prices sit at around £1.40 a liter, it continues to make biodiesel at around 30p a liter a very attractive alternative, not to mention the benefits to the environment biodiesel provides.

The price of waste cooking oil has risen significantly as a result of the increased demand for the waste item. Gone are the days when businesses were paying others to take away their waste cooking oil. With the increased awareness of the environmental benefits and the cost savings businesses can make by producing their own biodiesel, more and more business are utilizing their waste to their advantage.

Used cooking oil used to be expensive to dispose of but many businesses are capitalizing on having their own supply of waste cooking oil and are producing their own biodiesel, thereby benefiting from the cost savings of being able to run their own vehicles or generators on biodiesel, as well as the reduction in carbon emissions they make by using this alternative energy supply. 

In today’s economic climate, cost savings for small businesses can be the difference with staying afloat or going under. Green Fuels, the world’s leading and longest established manufacturer of biodiesel production equipment, manufacture a range of easy-to-use, portable equipment. The Green Fuels FuelPod 2 is a nifty way to turn a waste product into energy. It produces clean-burning biodiesel and is a safe, user-friendly and reliable small-scale biodiesel processing system.

Larger biofuel plants sometimes fail because they cannot secure a reliable supply of waste cooking oil to convert to biofuels. However, community-scale biofuel production enables any enterprise with a canteen (and therefore a supply of waste cooking oil) to start produce biodiesel. The first 2,500 liters are tax free (in the U.K.) as well as producing an offsetting of 7 tons of carbon (CO2), and with a cost of 30p a liter, that makes for a very significant saving on energy bills.   

There are a number of key benefits to a Green Fuel FuelPod 2:

-FuelPod 2 has the capacity to produce 100 liters of biodiesel every day from waste or new oil

-Timed controls make it easy to use

-Unique safety features ensure safe production of biodiesel

-Fuel dispensing system with regulation filter makes it safe and easy to fill your car

-Low maintenance

-Odor free

-Robust design

-Integrated ion-exchange resin fuel purification system to guarantee the highest quality biodiesel

In 2011, Green Fuels installed a FuelPod2 in Odyssey’s fish restaurant and take away in Eastbourne, which has been a great cost saving to the business. Panayiotif Photiou, the owner, said, “As a business we had a lot of waste oil every week from our three restaurants and making our own fuel from it was a no brainer for us. Not only does it save us money, but the equipment takes up hardly any room, is easy to use and we recouped the cost of the machine in just over a year. We are also able to prevent our waste cooking oil from causing more environmental harm by turning into methane if it were left to rot in a landfill site. And I am all in favor of recycling what we have anyway. We also benefit from having a fuel supply that I run our vans on. We have three restaurants in the area, the Odessy Restaurant, the Dolphin Fish Bar and the Trident Fish Restaurant, and we have a lot of deliveries to make. Having our own biodiesel means we drive 20,000 miles a year for free. ”

Photiou goes on to say, “In these tough economic times, any cost savings we can make as a business is a benefit, and I would encourage anyone with a supply of used cooking oil to put it to good use rather than chucking it out, there is very little effort on our part to turn it into high-quality biodiesel.”

James Hygate, CEO of Green Fuels, said, “The genius in the FuelPod is that they are small, about the size of a wheelie bin, and so are very portable and can be moved to wherever they are needed. There are a number of very unsafe products on the market and many of our customers have come to us after they have had disasters with home kits, one chap burnt his garden shed down, he was lucky not to be hurt. We think safety is paramount and we have never had such an issue with any of our FuelPods.”

Hygate went on to say, “We have a seen a great demand for these products and they pay for themselves very quickly, especially if you have your own supply of waste cooking oil. We have a number of customers who are helping their community by collecting waste oil and ensuring it is being recycled and turned into energy.”