Biodiesel is a renewable, clean-burning fuel that can be made from recycled vegetable oils and resulting fats. It is processed into a form of methane used in combustion engines of cars and other biofuel supporting modern engines. Many vehicles that currently use diesel gasoline only require changes in the engine control unit (ECU) to be able to run efficiently on biodiesel.
The United States is the number one producer in biodiesels having produced 4.7 billion liters of biodiesel in 2014. The USA comes in ahead of Brazil (3.4 billion liters), Germany (3.4 billion liters), and Indonesia (3.1 billion liters).
See below for the interactive map of the biodiesel distribution and production.
In Myrtle Beach, there are currently over 1,700 restaurants as of 2013. Many, if not all, use vegetable oil for cooking. The south is notorious for its fried food and a study from a smaller sized town near Toronto, Canada found 151 restaurants discarded 1422 liters of vegetable oil per month. A rough estimate using the same ratio, Myrtle Beach restaurants would discard about 16,000 liters of oil per month.
Biodiesel is roughly a 1-to-1 conversion of vegetable oil to gas that can be used in engines, meaning roughly 4,200 gallons of usable biodiesel is being discarded each month in the Myrtle Beach area. At an average cost of $2.18 a gallon, that’s more than $9,156 in fuel that could be produced and consumed each month.
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