Heating a Greenhouse with Used Cooking Oil

This video demonstrates that it is possible to be certified organic, while doing something that is hugely wasteful. This is not the highest and best use for any type of oil. It would make more sense as a motor fuel, animal feed, soap base, and just about any other purpose that oil is used for. Burning it to heat the great outdoors, makes no sense to me.

He didn't specify how much tax money the operation is sucking back. Without that information, we can't judge this on purely economic terms, leaving aside the resource wastage issue.

The oil wasn't going to the dump before this subsidy trial was enacted.He mentioned that before he started this, rendering companies picked it up. These are recycling outfits that supply raw materials to pet food makers and others who use old oil. The free market determined that they need to be paid, since the value of the resource is not enough to warrant the costs. The people of the state are now paying someone else to deprive this industry of a finite feedstock. The people of the state should be outraged and the rendering companies should take legal action to exact a financial penalty on those who approved this.

His energy numbers at 13:00 are interesting.

I wonder how clean waste engine oil burners are these days? That seems like the better use for heating (if clean), saving veggie for the higher uses like Dale mentioned.

Ideally, I would have a multi-fuel system based on an outdoor wood boiler that also could burn oil.

R Scott posted while I added to my earlier post. ---------------------------- A common type of government grant proposal around here, involves taking perfectly reusable building wood and grinding it up to be fed into burners to produce heat or electricity. --- I recycle lumber. It's very efficient. Buildings are dismantled by muscle power, the parts are piled on the lawn and every scrounge in the city pops in to buy very cheap, high quality old fir. This wood is cleaned up by the purchaser and then used to build things.

Some of the wood that should be reused in this manner is crushed up by giant excavators and hauled to hog fuel burners and other bio fuel facilities that are allowed to bypass dumping fees. They call it recycling. I can see that they are incinerators. The heat and electricity produced has a lower market value than the unprocessed fuel would be worth at one of my yard sales. They only exist due to the direct subsidies and the dump fees avoided. On a level playing field, those of us who reuse this lumber can remove unwanted buildings at lower cost. The province has created a state of affairs that reduces the quantity of used wood available.

I would be very surprised if burning oil in a greenhouse could compete with the thousands of small makers of bio diesel that have cropped up everywhere. This is the way of the future in unwanted cooking oil.The people of Maine are paying to prevent that natural evolution in this town. They are paying to heat these greenhouses and as the owner of the farm points out, they are paying to reduce the cost of operating restaurants. I'm on the other side of the continent, in a different country, and I'm outraged. The people of Maine must be very forgiving of government waste.

He sure is going through alot of unnecessary steps to burn WVO AND he should be using that clean oil to run his tractors and trucks.

I plan on using WVO to heat my GH. built the wtaer heater portion today, and plan on testing it out tonight even though it's not going to be that cold tonight.

R Scott wrote:His energy numbers at 13:00 are interesting.

I wonder how clean waste engine oil burners are these days? That seems like the better use for heating (if clean), saving veggie for the higher uses like Dale mentioned.

Ideally, I would have a multi-fuel system based on an outdoor wood boiler that also could burn oil.

His quote is INACCURATE. He's quoting the amount of energy that it takes to crow corn to make corn oil to convert to biodiesel. Add in the energy required to make the methanol and yes it's 1.2 units of energy to get one unit, BUT if you consider that WVO has had a useful life and it's users are pleased to have feasted on transfats, then the only additional energy units is the methanol. My guess would be it takes .2-.25 units of mthanol to make one unit of biodiesel.

What a waste of oil. There is no excuse for not blending the clean straight oil with diesel upto 50% in the middle of summer and putting that straight into the tractor. The waste oil and food particles could be mixed with sawdust waste and used in a biomass boiler for his polytunnel heating. I also dont understand why his polytunnels are not insulated with bubble wrap. We certainly could not afford to be so wasteful with heat.