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Cooking oil fuels
county vehicles

Volcanoes Park will start
using leftover oil, as Maui
County has done for years

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By Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondent

HILO -- For the next three years, trucks in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park will be running on cooking oil left over from fried chicken and french fries, the park announced.

The source of the oil is Pacific Biodiesel Inc., located at the Central Maui Landfill. Several Maui County vehicles, including bulldozers, have been using the fuel since the company was founded in 1996.

The company has since built a cooking-oil recycling plant in Nagano, Japan, which gets its raw material from a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Pacific Biodiesel is also building an Oahu plant on Sand Island.

Hawaii Volcanoes Superintendent Jim Martin said his park is trying the fuel in a three-year demonstration project.

"This is an experiment. We hope it works. We hope we're a model for other government entities in Hawaii," Martin said.

The park program, financed by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, calls for the purchase of 18,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel.

The first 800-gallon shipment for use in 16 park vehicles was received recently, a park announcement said.

Pacific Biodiesel President Bob King was already operating a conventional diesel company in 1996 when he became concerned with the volume of restaurant grease being dumped in the Maui landfill.

He teamed up with Daryl Reece of the University of Idaho, now the company's vice president, to create a process that cleans used cooking oil and chemically changes it by removing naturally occurring glycerin, the basis of soap.

Burning biodiesel fuel produces only half the soot and just 5 percent of the carcinogens that conventional diesel does, King said.

AT&T uses it in remote cell-phone sites, King said.

If conventional diesel spills, the company has a headache. If biodiesel spills, it's biodegradable, he said.

The only engine change needed to switch to biodiesel is replacement of certain hoses.

Biodiesel in Hawaii is 10 to 15 percent more expensive than conventional diesel at current gas station prices, King said.

"It may be a long time before biodiesel is practical for individuals, but it could be a good fuel for government agencies and companies with fleets of vehicles," Martin said.

"We want to be a leader," he said.

The entire electrical needs of Maui could be satisfied if two-thirds of the land there now producing sugar were converted to vegetable oil production, King said.

The Sand Island plant under construction will convert restaurant grease to a lower-quality fuel used for diesel boilers, he said.