From Waste to Fuel
Liverpool ONE has an interesting plan to make the world a greener place. It’s converting waste cooking oils from its eateries to biofuel – on site.
The shopping center has built a biofuel room in its basement. Through a series of filtered pumps, the used cooking oil is delivered to the Fuelpod. The oil is heated over night to 65˚c. The warm oil is then mixed with methanol and potassium hydroxide (the potassium uses the methanol as a carrier and binds the fats within the oil) the products of which are biodiesel and glycerine laden oil, which can be safely used to accelerate compost.
The shopping center hopes to produce 200 liters of biofuel each week, which it will use to power its fleet of estate vehicles.
Biodiesel is still a controversial idea in the automotive industry, largely due to the capacity that would be required to fill worldwide demand. But for small-scale, individual projects like this, it might just be perfect.
