[Biodiesel In Utah] Gauging Real Interest of WVO need/use in SL County

[Andre Shoumatoff]

I wanted to report that I have been having discussions with Renegade Oil including an excellent meeting we had last week up here in Heber City including a tour of our brewing facility, to come up with a possible solution to the "grease problem" in Salt Lake County.  

The proposed partnership would be a tank (1000 gallons most likely) of WVO placed somewhere in Salt Lake City (I am currently exploring options - I do have some possibles already).  The oil would be available from a wide diameter spiget to anyone interested.  It would be fully rendered, no water, would be high quality that will titrate low, and be filtered to at least 1/4" as part of the agreement.  Currently estimated cost would be about ~$.85 a gallon to biodieselers (keep in mind they get are currently getting $1.28 on the market - so this would be a compromise for them).

At this point, I am trying to gauge how much real world interest there would be to using this grease, and whether it is worth the expense of insurance, cost of the tank, etc, that hte biodiesel coop will need to take on.

How much are people who are brewing willing to use and would you be willing to pay $.85 a gallon or so to buy clean and legal oil?  Most of you probably know, the big deal is that collecting WVO in Salt Lake County is currently illegal...   Besides that, it takes reasonable infrastructure IMO to collect grease and do it well, and it seems that biodieselers are giving biodiesel a bad name because many are giving up after a few months, walking away from verbal agreements, not picking up barrels when needed, making messes, etc.  As Renegade put it, we are "their best salesman."

If you can please post up in response, I am curious to hear if you guy think. 

Hurtles for us are:
- Cost of tank, setup, etc.
- Cost of insurance (re legal for Renegade).
- Cost of oil.
- Finding a location for the oil that someone can man.

Hurdles for them:
- Making sure they can deliver.
- Legal (this is probably the biggest deal breaker - they have legitimate legal concerns about it that would need to be addressed).


Best, Andre

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