Grease from Taste of Chicago to become biodiesel fuel
BY LISA DONOVAN Cook County Reporter ldonovan@suntimes.com June 29, 2011 4:02PM
Updated: January 9, 2012 1:39PM
Those hot, bubbling vats of oil used to fry the egg rolls, French fries and crab Rangoon at the Taste of Chicago will be given new life under a green initiative launched by the Chicago Park District.
The cooking grease from the Taste will be recycled in to biodiesel fuel that will be used in dozens of park district vehicles, from lawnmowers to trucks that groom the beaches along the lakefront, park district officials said on Wednesday.
But recycling is only part of the story.
“There’s the obvious grease we’re able to reuse, and there is a cost savings to us based on the per gallon costs. But we’re reducing emissions, too, because biodiesel burns cleaner,” said Brendan Daley, the park district’s director of green initiatives.
In some cases, biodiesel will be used to power a single vehicle, but in most cases it will be a 5 percent to 20 percent blend, said Kyle Powers, project manager in the office of green initiatives. Right now, workers are test-driving different blends on vehicles, officials say.
The projected savings is about 52 cents per gallon of fuel, meaning the cost would go from $3.11 a gallon to $2.59.
Vendors from the Taste aren’t the only ones getting in on the game — Chicago restaurants also are donating the dispatched grease. The used vegetable oil is sent to the Southwest Side’s Darling International Inc. plant which is cleaning the used grease — that is, getting rid of food and other matter — free of charge. The so-called yellow grease is then processed at a recently opened biodiesel production facility housed at a park district fleet fueling facility near 39th and Lake Shore Drive.
The $650,000 pricetag for the biodiesel processing equipment and other materials was paid for, in part, with a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
As many as 300 park district vehicles may fuel up at the site, which will produce 20,000 gallons of biodiesel this year and 50,000 gallons in the following years.
So does this mean we’ll get a whiff of the Taste, every time a city park is mowed?
“Keep in mind, that grease is being cleaned before we get it so you probably won’t be smelling crab Rangoon or French fries out of a park district vehicle,” park district spokeswoman Zvezdana Kubat said with a laugh.
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