Years ago, the Cornish Pasty was made as a practical way for feeding hungry miners at work. Today, it is being used as a practical way to fuel cars.
Greenergy, a green fuel company based in North East Lincolnshire, has announced plans to use Cornish pasties to fuel cars by making biodiesel from them. They have partnered with a specialist in waste cooking oil, Brocklesby Ltd, in order to extract the oil from misshapen, overcooked, or past their sell-by-date pasties that are destined for landfill or compost. It’s not just pasties either, they will also use other high fat solid foods such as pies, sausage rolls and crisps. These foods can contain between 25% and 30% oil and fat, therefore provide ample opportunity for biodiesel production. After sourcing from a variety of national food manufacturers, they are then blended with diesel at their £50m production facility in Immingham, making the fuel ready to be sold at petrol stations across Britain.
The Future
Greenergy has future plans to use the food waste to form solid fuel pellets or briquettes, as well making more fuel for vehicles in the form of bioethanol. Furthermore, any food solids that remain are to be dried for composting or to produce energy through anaerobic digestion. The quantities of biofuel being produced currently are small, however there are plans to scale up so that it can become a significant proportion of the biodiesel production.
It doesn’t have to be pasties
There are a variety of other foods that can be used to make biofuels, such as:
- Chicken fat
- Olive stones
- Apples – the fructose from fruits can be used to make a biofuel with fewer emissions than corn-based ethanol
- Potatoes and chips
- Mushrooms – the enzymes help to break down materials into sugar, which is required to make some forms of biofuel
- Hazelnuts – provide a high yield of naturally occurring oil
- Coffee grounds – also provide a high yield of naturally occurring oil
- Spilt peas – have high levels of starch used to make biofuel
- Dairy products – many forms of agricultural and industrial waste can be used to produce biofuels
- Taramasalata
- Oil from fish frying containing high quantities of breadcrumbs.
With the rising price of oil and the controversy over the production of edible crops for fuel, the use of waste products to fuel vehicles can be viewed as a sustainable alternative to petrol – great in quantity and better for the environment, as petrol emits a range of harmful greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.
