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As biodiesel has gained in popularity so has a feedstock that used to be just a waste product. Used cooking oil from restaurants can be made into some pretty high-quality biodiesel, and refiners are having to compete to get what used to be thrown out.

This story on the Oregonlive.com web site says it used to cost restaurants to have the old grease hauled away. Now, it’s become a second income for them:

Recycled cooking oil has traditionally been sold for use in cattle feed and cosmetics. But the segment going to biofuels has grown in recent years to account for about 20 percent of the used oil market, said Tyson Keever, co-founder of Sequential Pacific Biofuels, the state’s largest manufacturer of biodiesel.

“You have processors now in the metro area who are looking at using that grease for biodiesel primarily,” said Mike McCallum, president and CEO of the Oregon Restaurant Association. “There are restaurants who are being solicited for the use of the grease and are getting some money for it.”

The article goes on to point that each person in Oregon uses about a gallon of fryer grease a month. Now, if everyone of those gallons was tunred into biodiesel, the story says it would meet only half of what’s needed in diesel for that state. But I’m more a glass-is-half-full kind of guy. Isn’t that half of the diesel we wouldn’t have to get from foreign sources or even non-renewable American sources? And isn’t it better than throwing it into a hole in the ground? Seems to me that fryer grease biodiesel is about as green as you can get.

The recent story of a biodiesel plant under construction near Evansville, Wisconsin that halted construction because of the high price of its feedstock, soybeans (see my November 13th, 2007 story on the issue), has prompted the local newspaper to question how economical making biodiesel really is.

This article in the Janesville (WI) Gazette breaks down how you can actually still make a buck turning about $10 of feedstock into about $3.50 of biodiesel:

Aren’t you crushing an expensive product into a cheaper one?

— The rest is soy hulls, which are sometimes used as filler in animal feed, and waste product. Some beans are lost in the crushing process.

The article goes on to point out that consumers have shown a willingness to buy the green fuel. They just want the price to be less than or at least comparable to what they’ll pay for petroleum diesel at the pump.

Appleton, Minnesota soybean farmer Ed Hegland has been tapped to head the National Biodiesel Board.

This press release from NBB says he’s no stranger to the biodiesel advocacy group:

Hegland has served as a board member for the nonprofit trade association since 2004, representing the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council, and was elected to the governing board last year.

* Gary Haer, vice chair, Renewable Energy Group, Inc., Ames, Iowa
* Graham Noyes, secretary, Imperium Renewables, Grays Harbor, Wash.
* Ed Ulch, treasurer, Iowa Soybean Association, Solon, Iowa.

The election is the first one under NBB’s newly adopted structure to help ensure the industry’s ability to speak with one voice. It streamlines and clarifies NBB’s membership categories, guarantees more biodiesel producers seats on the governing board, and envisions an increasing proportion of biodiesel producer-leaders over time.