By SCOTT SMITH
The recipe is fairly simple.
Just mix a cup and a half of caustic soda and 11 gallons of methanol with 55 gallons of used cooking oil, put it through a processor, and the result is a big batch of biodiesel fuel.
Mix that batch with regular diesel fuel at an 80 percent diesel/20 percent biodiesel ratio, and the cost of fueling the city of Kokomo’s truck fleet begins to drop.
Welcome to the new K-Fuel program, the city’s ambitious plan to both draw some “green” notoriety to the City of Firsts, and to save scarce tax dollars.
Wednesday, state legislators, Indiana mayors and local elected officials will join representatives from the governor’s office and Congress at the unveiling of the state’s first city-run biodiesel production facility.
Situated at the Kokomo Wastewater Treatment Plant, the cluster of tanks, pipes and machinery is set up and ready to go.
By Wednesday, it will have produced several batches of biodiesel from the 800 gallons of used cooking oil the city has already stockpiled.
For months, the city’s “K-Fuel Team,” — city employees Dave Galvin, Paul Munoz, Chris Cooper and Jack Harrison — have worked with Guntersville, Ala.-based Biodiesel Logic Inc. to create the city’s new biodiesel factory.
Thursday, the team gave the first tour of the operation, a $65,000 investment that city officials hope will trim upward of $25,000 from the city’s annual diesel bill.
The Biodiesel Logic processor consists of two machines — one to de-water the used cooking oil, and another to process the “recipe.”
Four 1,000 gallon plastic containers — two to hold used cooking oil, and two to hold finished biodiesel — complete the setup. Add to that several 330 gallon containers the city will use to pick up used cooking oil from local kitchens, and 500 1-gallon jugs the city will distribute so everyday citizens can drop off oil, and you pretty much have the entirety of the setup.
At a rate of 55 gallons a day, the operation should be able to create about 18,000 gallons of biodiesel a year, Galvin said.
Factoring in everything — the cost of the ingredients, manpower, depreciation on the equipment and the cost of hauling the “raw feedstock” (the used cooking oil) — the K-Fuel team members estimate they’ll be able to produce their fuel at about .70 cents per gallon, conservatively.
They’ve already signed up 10 local kitchens willing to part with their used oil gratis, and are looking for more oil providers. Galvin said the city is already expecting to receive 1,500 gallons of used oil a month.
“We really can’t afford to pay them for the oil, but we’re offering free advertising through the Web site we’re setting up, www.refuelkokomo.org,” Munoz said. “It normally works out that they’re happy to have it removed for free.”
Even restaurant managers who receive a nominal fee for their used oil might be willing to forego $50 or so a month, to participate in the program, he added.
Galvin, who acts as the city’s “green specialist,” said there’s also a lobbying effort underway to provide renewable energy tax incentives for restaurants that participate.
The K-Fuel team has traveled to the Birmingham suburb of Hoover, Ala., a city of 75,000 that began making biodiesel from cooking oil in March 2007.
Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos said Hoover has produced about 20,000 gallons of biodiesel since the program started, at a cost of less than $1 a gallon.
“We were the guinea pigs. We had the first machine,” he said.
Hoover, like Kokomo, is working with Biodiesel Logic, and Petelos said the initial kinks have been worked out of the Biodiesel Logic system.
“There was a lot of skepticism when we first started, and we had to endure a lot of criticism from different folks, but the plant looks a lot different than it did two years ago,” Petelos said. “So what [Biodiesel Logic] sold Kokomo is a lot better product than we had.”
Petelos said Hoover relies on a group of 21 small restaurants, plus the contributions from the general public.
The large restaurants have contracts to dispose of their used oil, whereas the small places often dispose of relatively small amounts by putting it in the dumpster or even down a drain.
“We’re keeping all of that stuff out of the landfill and the sewage plants,” Petelos said.
Kokomo city officials said they expect lower sewer maintenance costs to be an additional benefit of the program, if it results in less oil being poured into sewers.
Cooper, the Kokomo wastewater plant superintendent, said close to half of the city’s sewer maintenance problems are caused by people putting oil and grease down drains.
The diesel fleet in Hoover has been running on a biodiesel mix since 2006, so the trucks there were conditioned to the fuel mix even before Hoover set up its own production facility.
In Kokomo, the fuel mixture will be introduced gradually, Munoz said, by the simple process of mixing the biodiesel into the 10,000 gallon diesel tank at the Kokomo Street Department.
Diesel vehicles could see some clogged fuel filters after the first tank or two of biodiesel, Munoz said, because the product tends to act as a solvent on diesel deposits.
Petelos said the fuel filters will have to be replaced once or twice, but after that, there should be no problems. In north central Alabama, some of the vehicles even run on 100 percent biodiesel, he said.
That’s not possible in Kokomo, at least in the winter months, but in Hoover, they’ve had calls or visits from more than 100 cities interested in the process.
“The one thing I always tell people is that every gallon we can make is a gallon we don’t have to import from countries that don’t like us,” Petelos said.
