Website: www.ecobus.net
Cooking oil is a waste material that can be found everywhere in the EU and for which collection schemes and recovery options are not sufficiently developed. The common method of disposing of the oil in the sewage system is an illegal practice that causes many problems. The oil clogs the sewage systems causing malfunctions in the filters and oil/water separators.
Cooking oil can be recycled into an environmentally-friendly fuel for use in diesel engines. Thus the main objective of the "Ecobus" project (LIFE02 ENV/E/000253) steered by the beneficiary EMT, the publicly-owned Municipal Transport Company of Valencia, was to develop a pilot collection system for the city's large volume of used cooking oil, and then to use it as bio-fuel for its city centre buses.
The project ran from November 2002-2004, during which the pilot scheme was extended to include not only domestic oil, but also those coming from the catering sector: involving oil used in the frying process in bars, restaurants and hotels. All participating establishments were identified with a sticker, and were given containers for the collection of used oil.
It achieved all its objectives. On average, some 100 litres/month of domestic waste oil was collected. By the end of the project, 800 commercial outlets had between them collected some 800,000 litres of used cooking oil. The oil was stored and sent to a transformation plant to produce an eco-diesel fuel mix for use on the city's urban buses. During the project 322,654 litres of eco-diesel were used in the Valencia City fleet.
To find similar reports, click on a keyword below:
Biodiesel
: Biomass & Bioenergy
: Energy from Waste
: LIFE Programme
: Liquid Biofuels
: Oils & Fats
: Renewable Energy Sources & Systems
: Sustainable Development
: Sustainable Energy
: Sustainable Transport
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