Fuels like diesel and heating oil might seem like interchangeable commodities, but the quality and reliability of your provider matters. And when a college or university is considering replacing its traditional petroleum-based fuel oil with green heating fuel, those factors are even more important.
As you evaluate your options, consider these ten questions and answers to help you on your fact-finding mission.
1. What kind of oil will work in your system?
Any utility grade oil-fired boiler that uses traditional heating oil can also burn an equivalent vegetable-based product like Lifecycle Renewables’ Truburn. Truburn is made from recycled vegetable oil that was previously used in restaurants. It’s primarily soy oil that has been treated to remove impurities and improve stability.
2. Does recycled vegetable oil damage your equipment?
Recycled vegetable oil that has been properly processed is a plug-and-play replacement for traditional petroleum-based oil. Premium suppliers like Lifecycle Renewables only use high-quality, oils that burn cleanly, and almost never require anything more than a simple fine-tuning of the burner. Recycled vegetable oil has not been shown to increase wear and tear on heating equipment.
3. How much does recycled vegetable oil cost?
Recycled vegetable oil prices track roughly in line with traditional heating oil.
4. Does recycled vegetable oil produce the same greenhouse gasses as traditional oil?
Here’s where recycled cooking oil shines: Products like Truburn produce more than 86 percent less harmful greenhouse gasses than the equivalent traditional heating oil.
5. What does “carbon neutral” or “renewable” mean?
Recycled cooking oil is a carbon neutral fuel, which means that during its lifespan it pulls as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it produces when it’s burned. Recycled cooking oil started life in the ground as soybeans, where the plants pulled carbon dioxide from the air. As long as soybeans can be grown, recycled cooking oil as a fuel source is limitlessly renewable.
6. Where does recycled vegetable oil come from?
Quick service restaurants produce an average of 150 to 250 pounds of used cooking oil apiece every week. Recyclers like Lifecycle Renewables collect that oil from restaurant clients, aggregate and process it at regional hubs and then deliver it to heating clients.
7. Does it matter where you source your recycled vegetable oil?
Yes! If your goal is to reduce your environmental footprint, it matters where your oil comes from. Lifecycle Renewables both collects and distributes its treated Truburn product locally, which means the recycled cooking oil a customer like Harvard University is using was probably being used to make a batch of french fries in Boston 30 days before.
8. How reliable is the supply?
Lifecycle Renewables delivers millions of gallons of Truburn to clients every year in a service area from Maine down through New Jersey and to Philadelphia. A client like the Philadelphia Steam Authority can burn up to 20,000 gallons of Truburn per hour.
9. How long can you store recycled vegetable oil?
Truburn is formulated to be very stable, allowing it to be stored virtually indefinitely. Current customers regularly store Truburn for a year or more before using it.
