What Everyone Ought to Know About Yellow Grease

What would you think if you were driving next to a bus out in the country and you suddenly smelled French fries? Would you feel a wave of nostalgia for those days gone by when eating a French fry was ok? When you didn't have to worry about trans fats or weight gain? Would you be mystified as to where the fragrance was coming from? Or would you just pass it off as just another olfactory hallucination brought on by melancholy and days gone by.

Stop! In the name of all that is greasy and absolutely bad for you!

That heady scent is not all in your head at all. It's the fuel that is running that bus, you green newbie! And, it's all made from yellow grease!

What in all that is green is yellow grease?

That is a question for the rendering industry.

What in all that is green is rendering?

Now, we are going to get down to the nitty gritty of how the very grease that is so bad for your innards is so very good for the air you breathe.

Yellow grease is a concept used in the biodiesel industry which connotes using frying oils from restaurants and turning it into fuel.

More deeply, Wikipedia defines yellow grease usage in this way, "Yellow grease is recovered, traded as a marginally valuable commodity, and has traditionally been used to spray on roads as dust control, or as animal feed additive. But waste restaurant grease has recently become more desirable as one source of biodiesel fuel for cars. Although most biodiesel is developed from renewable plant sources, especially soybeans, yellow grease is attractive because it's cheap, it turns waste into fuel, and the exhaust purportedly smells like French fries."

Can you believe it? French fries.

Fort Wayne, Indiana, my hometown is way ahead of the curve in this regard because all of its school buses that harkens from Fort Wayne Community School, and the street buses from Citilink are run on biodiesel fuel.

This is one area where Fort Wayne has been making important inroads in the biodiesel field. Now, I doubt very much that they are using yellow grease in their biodiesel mix because I have found myself often behind school buses, and unless I am next to a MacDonald's at the same time, I have yet to smell French fries.

Perhaps, there are three questions that need to be answered in regards to yellow grease and biodiesel fuel.

1) What are the varied substances that can be used to make biodiesel fuel? Is yellow grease one of the best?

2) What is the biodiesel fuel made of in the FWCS system?

3) What does MacDonald's do with all their restaurant grease?

Just askin'