Green Tomato: Biodiesel Is a Natural Solution at the CIA at Greystone
03 November 2012
Produced for only $0.88 a gallon to operate the college’s vehicles, the savings from converting cooking oil to fuel rather than purchasing regular diesel is huge.
The delicious smell of hot, freshly made doughnuts and French fries is wafting through the air at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley, and it has nothing to do with the creations from the college’s culinary students. It’s the smell of cooking oil turned into biodiesel fuel being used in campus vehicles.
The biodiesel fuel is created on campus from used cooking oil gathered from the fryers in the college’s teaching kitchen and Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant. About 50 gallons of cooking oil is transformed into 45 gallons of fuel by putting the oil into the CIA’s biodiesel distiller. This machine removes the fatty acids from the oil and cleans out impurities. The oil is then heated to a high temperature to remove any remaining water in the mixture.
“We use high-quality cooking oil here at the CIA, which makes high-quality biodiesel fuel,” says Greg Phipps, facilities manager. “This was a very natural transition for us to make and a wise investment in our future and in the environment.”
The CIA at Greystone uses the fuel in two vans that shuttle students between campus and off-site residence halls and in an all-terrain vehicle used to move equipment around campus. Each of the vans has a 26-gallon gas tank, which in late-2010 was filled with diesel fuel costing $3.35 per gallon. (It’s even higher today.) Using biodiesel costs the school 88 cents per gallon to make.
“The CIA as a whole is committed to reducing our impact on the environment and taking care of the planet,” says Charles E. Henning, managing director. “It is our philosophy to be environmentally conscious and do everything we can through recycling, composting and minimizing energy consumption with our equipment and buildings. We pass these solutions on to our students, who will eventually implement these practices in their future operations.”
Photo: Students at the CIA at Greystone are transported daily by shuttles that use biodiesel fuel created on campus from the school’s used cooking oil. Courtesy of CIA/Tyffani Peters
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