Out of the frying pan, into the gas tank

RIO RICO — Leo’s Cafe uses three gallons of vegetable oil to prepare the chile rellenos, enchiladas and other spicy treats consumed by the 450 customers that come to the restaurant on average each day. Stretched over the 40 years that Giovanna Ostler and her family have operated the restaurant just south of the border in Nogales, that equals enough oil to fill three backyard swimming pools.

Ostler currently donates her used oil to a local pig farm for feed. But she was surprised and intrigued to find out that her left-over grease could instead help fuel fire trucks on both sides of the border.

“Is that what people are going to use in their cars in the future?” she asked.

The answer to her question – at least in Nogales – may depend on the success of a pilot project led cooperatively by the Rio Rico Fire District and their counterparts south of the border, Los Bomberos de Nogales.

Fire fighters in Ambos Nogales, as the twin border cities are known, have teamed up to convince Ostler and others that their used cooking oil can be converted into a clean-burning fuel called biodiesel.

Biodiesel, project leaders say, could help prevent the waste-water treatment plant at Rico Rico from getting gunked up with grease and cut down on air pollution along the border at the same time.

The pilot project aims arrange collection of left-over oil from grease traps at restaurants and factory cafeterias. Once bits of french fries and other foods are filtered away, the oil will then be mixed with methanol or ethanol – two highly combustible alcohols – and a dash of potassium hydroxide until the chemical reaction produces a fuel that can be burned in any diesel engine and create less air pollution.

Initially, the sister fire departments plan to use the biodiesel as an additive to regular diesel fuel, which is made from petroleum. But eventually they may run their vehicles exclusively on biodiesel, says Rio Rico Fire Chief Mike Foster.

No one knows for sure just how much fuel could be produced with the arrangement. But one factory cafeteria alone in Nogales, Sonora disposes of 2,650 liters of waste oil per month.

Some Tucson biodiesel hobbyists run 16 vehicles on just the 800 gallons of grease they collect every month.

“Alternative fuels are happening whether you want it or not,” Foster says. “This could be a huge win for all the stakeholders involved and for the environment. I like to call it a win-win-win situation.”

The use of vegetable oil to power engines is not a new idea. Quite to the contrary, Rudolph Diesel allegedly used peanut oil to power the diesel engine he first debuted at the 1900 World Fair in Paris and predicted that vegetable oils would one day replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy for combustion engines.

What is new, however, is that this project is the first attempt to collaborate across the U.S.-Mexico border on production of this alternative fuel.

“It’s innovate because of the bi-lateral element,” says Alberto Rodriguez, spokesman for the Border Environment Cooperation Commission, the organization funding the project. “This could be a real alternative for managing this kind of waste along the border.”

The idea was born when an employee of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality discovered that the Nogales International Wasterwater Treatment Plant in Rico Rico was getting clogged by waste oils collecting in the sewer that flows from Nogales, Sonora north across the border. The ADEQ staffer, Hans Huth was already making biodiesel in his backyard and immediately recognized the possibility.

When he shared his idea to a border air quality task force, Foster had his own idea.

“I had been reviewing our fuel bills at the time and thought there might be some way to turn this into useable products to defray our fuel costs,” Foster says.

One challenge will be to convince some restaurant owners to invest in grease traps, which collect and store waste oil that would otherwise wash down the drain and end up at the treatment facility in Rio Rico. For help, Foster has recruited researchers from the University of Arizona and the Nogales Institute of Technology.

“In the preliminary surveys, people were very interested and excited about the project,” Foster says. “I’m optimistic that it will change people’s habits.”

But the project faces other hurdles. Bureaucratic paperwork has been so extensive that nearly a year after the group was approved for a $90,000 research grant, firefighters on both sides of the border have yet to receive a penny.

“It’s behind because of all of the paperwork required by BECC,” said Jose Rodriguez, an Air Quality Coordinator for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, who recently gave an update on the project at a public meeting.

Until recently, BECC focused on lending to massive industrial projects, such wastewater treatment facilities. But when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency handed control of the grant program over to the Mexico-based BECC at the end of 2005, the commission began lending to small projects like the biodiesel group.

Members of the biodiesel team say the paperwork alone requires the efforts of a full-time professional.

“The process of coordination is complicated. I don’t think it’s our paperwork,” Ramirez says.

Chief Foster, who coordinates for all of the project’s 10 stakeholders, confesses that some players have remained sceptical – including his own board of directors.

“The executive support has been the hardest to cultivate,” Foster says. “The board members don’t necessarily understand why it would be a benefit.”

The benefits are clear, says Tucson biodiesel enthusiast Steve Fisher. Biodiesel cuts our dependence on foreign oil, it can be made from waste products or from renewable resources such as algae or cottonseeds, and it cuts down significantly on carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

And, he says, the production of biodiesel produces only one bi-product: glycerine, the main ingredient in most soap.

During a tour of his home-brewing shed for biodiesel, Fisher gestures at the marked barrels. “Biodisel is a way of denying terrorists funding one gallon at a time.”

Foster is also interested to see how his trucks perform on biodiesel. Since it is a better lubricant than petroleum-based fuel, he expects his vehicles may even require less maintenance.

He admits, though, that the use of biodiesel does raise one question.

“My only concern is that I might make our firefighters fat because the emission smell like fries and make them hungry,” he said.

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