The city of Tallahassee has begun using used restaurant grease as an ingredient in the fuel that runs some city vehicles.
Some of the grease, which is a key ingredient in biodiesel, comes from Barnacle Bill's. The restaurant uses more than 350 pounds of cooking oil every week and used to have to pay to get it hauled away, but now the city does it for free.
"It's new for them and they're on it, but they're aggressive with it," said Barnacle's owner, Jeff Stilwell. "And hopefully it'll work out best for everybody. If they get enough to run the trucks, we'll all be in good shape sooner or later."
Biodiesel is 80 percent petroleum and 20 percent grease, and although grease may clog arteries, it works well in fire trucks and street sweepers.
"Two things that we noticed right away," said city employee Buddy Driggers. "One was the emissions smelled a lot better. People make that joke all the time, but it is true. It smells a lot better. And, secondly, the thing that we noticed was the base engine RPM on that particular truck increased about a 150 RPM. "It was just running smoother."
Tallahassee city officials say Panama City is also developing a cooking oil-to-biodiesel conversion plant. At least two Florida counties - Pinellas and Broward - run some of their fleet vehicles on imported biodiesel.
