The use of animal fats should be competitive with plant sources of oils used to produce biodiesel. Animal fats such as lard and tallow are cheaper per pound than crushed oil from plant sources such as soybeans, cottonseed, canola and others [ 1. Ash 2010 USDA ]. Companies that are involved with both the collection and processing of used oils, greases and fats should become an industry in demand in the future. In my home state, Arizona, there are already several waste grease based biodiesel manufacturing companies that also offer collection services. This is the case for Grecycle (Tucson, AZ) and also AZ Biodiesel (Phoenix, AZ). Used Animal Fat collection is already becoming a large industry that is available for biodiesel production. The use of animal fats in biodiesel production has risen and should continue to increase in the near future. Currently, at least 10 percent of our biodiesel supply consists of animal fats, whereas in Canada it is nearly 90 percent. It is estimated that nearly 5.5 billion liters (>1 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from used animal fats in the US [ 2. Goodfellow - SANIMAX ]. In fact, this may be a modest figure because poultry fat should account for a larger portion of used animal fats in the future. The figure above demonstrates that 80 percent of used fats and oils are mostly from greases or animal tallow (beef) versus lard or poultry fat [ 3. Goodfellow - SANIMAX ]. Poultry consumption has increased by three times the amount since the 1960's, whereas pork and beef consumption have been fairly steady in the several past decades. This has already brought great opportunities to larger companies involved with the poultry industry such as Tyson Foods.
It is estimated that Tyson Foods alone produces more than 2.3 billion pounds of chicken fat each year which is estimated to make at least 300 million gallons of biodiesel. A variety of companies are becoming diversified in the types of greases, fats and oils they collect and also are getting involved in the pre-processing (or direct processing) of these renewable resources. Companies such as Sanimax are involved with the collection of animal byproducts from meat rendering plants (ie beef) as well as spent cooking oil or trapped grease. The collection of trapped grease that may come from various sources is another needed service for the emerging biodiesel industry. Otherwise, trapped grease might otherwise be placed in landfills since it cannot be simply dumped into sewage systems. These collection companies also get involved with the pre-processing of waste fat, grease and oil sources by converting them into yellow grease, tallow or other processed animal fats. The collection and pre-processing of fats, grease or oil is a good business since the production of biodiesel from raw fats or used oil may also contain high amounts of what are called Free Fatty Acids (FFA). The higher amounts of Free Fatty Acids in animal fats or greases is what also sets them apart from plant based oils used in biodiesel production. If the FFA content is greater than 1 percent of the total mass of the used grease or fat, a minimum of one extra processing step is needed in order to convert it into usable biodiesel. In the future, animal fat collection / processing companies may also become involved with used animal wastewater. It has been known that used animal wastewater from meat rendering or dairy milk production can be converted into other usable chemicals through the use of fermenters.
REFERENCES
1. "Oil Crops Outlook 2010", USDA Economic Research Service Publication [2010], Ash M., Wittenberger K.,
2. "Biofuel Production from Animal Fats : A North American Perspective", Sanimax Energy (2008 or later), Goodfellow Jeremy
3. Same as Reference 2
Photos compliments from photo archives of Picassa
