“We like to take things that are old and not being used and turn them into new products and new industries,” said Central Park NC communications director Crystal Beasley. “Used vegetable oil would normally be thrown away or taken to a landfill, but we can actually take that vegetable oil and make brand new biodiesel to be used in cars.”
An offshoot of Central Park’s STARworks Center for Creative Enterprises, the STARworks Biofuels plant will produce biodiesel from waste vegetable oil.
According to Biofuels Coordinator Tony Inskeep, construction on the Star-based, non-profit operation is scheduled to be finish in the next couple of months. That’s when he will start visiting local restaurants in the Central Park eight-county region, giving information about the benefits of partnering with STARworks Biofuels by providing used fryer oil to the project.
“What some people think is happening is that you’re putting vegetable oil straight into a diesel engine,” said Inskeep. “That’s really not the case. It actually involves performing a chemical reaction on the oil, which makes it thinner and enables a diesel engine to run it.”
Or a furnace. Like the one that heats up STARworks Center - a reclaimed, 187,000 sqaure foot sock mill.
“We can lower our fuel bill and use something no one else wants,” said Beasley, who added that STARworks Glass and Ceramics studios will also be able to use the converted oil to offset expenses.
“Right now we’re definitely starting small,” said Beasley. “But eventually we want people to come from the community and say ‘I want to make biodiesel, teach me how.’ One person can come in and learn how to do it, and eventually we could have a large group of people who want to make biodiesel and distribute it to the community.”
With the plant, Beasley said STARworks Biofuels hopes to create jobs in the area and meet North Carolina’s goal of producing 10 percent of the liquid fuels used in the state by 2017.
“At this point there are two jobs,” said Inskeep. “There’s the jobs that I have, and then we’ll be hiring someone to actually collect the vegetable oil. The hope is that further down the road, as we’re producing more, we’ll be able to employ someone to hold workshops and teach other people how to do it — and we would need more fuel technicians.”
He said the goal is to have the capacity to produce between 60,000 and 250,000 gallons of biofuel per year.
“Piedmont Biofuels (in Pittsboro) is building the equipment for us, and they’ve been running a biodiesel plant for the last three years, maybe longer,” said Inskeep. “I want to say they have the capacity for one million gallons per year.”
According to Inskeep, a restaurant can discard anywhere from 30 gallons of usable oil per week to 50 gallons per year depending on what it serves.
“The only real free part (for the producer) is the vegetable oil,” said Inskeep, who explained that the chemicals used to convert the oil can cost up to $4 per gallon.
“But you don’t use gallon per gallon,” said Inskeep. “The long-term costs are probably lower (than regular diesel) for the average user.”
The project is being funded by a grant from the Biofuels Center of North Carolina.
“Our strategy here is to do a lot of environmentally friendly projects,” said Beasley. “We want to help reduce the need for foreign oil while bringing new industry into the area.”
For more information about STARworks Biofuels visit www.starworksnc.org.
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