News

The gunk going into restaurant grease traps clogs pipes and sometimes mixes with sanitary waste, creating a spawning ground for pathogens. The state classifies it as septage, requiring that it be pumped and treated before it can be landfilled or incinerated.

Who the heck would want it? For those in the renewable energy industry, that goo, referred to as brown grease, may be liquid gold. Lee Batchelder, a founder of Batchelder Biodiesel Refineries in Nashua, is hoping to turn brown grease into greenbacks. His business converts brown grease into biodiesel fuel. “We’re taking something no one wants and turning it into something everyone wants,” Batchelder explains, holding up a pint jar of biodiesel that looks and smells like mild vegetable oil.

Batchelder Biodiesel is the first NH company to seek a permit to produce biodiesel from brown grease, according to the NH Department of Environmental Services (DES). One other NH company, Atlantic Biodiesel in Salem, has a permit to produce biodiesel from yellow grease—food-grade quality cooking oil waste from friolators. “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said the mismanagement of grease trap waste going down sewers is the number one cause of sanitary sewer overflows,” says Patricia Hannon, supervisor of residuals management at DES. “[Turning brown grease into biodiesel] is a fabulous idea. We couldn’t be more pleased.”

Batchelder and his partners, William Langille and William Lynch, founded the company two years ago. Located in a downtown Nashua mill, it consists of a series of three 1,000-gallon tanks (recycled from Polaroid), piping that runs between the tanks and out of the facility for receiving grease (designed and installed by Batchelder’s son, Keith) and an explosion free room containing machines to separate the different parts of the brown grease.

Under the temporary permit it held earlier this year, the company received brown grease from haulers and paid them with biodiesel. Batchelder Biodiesel now has a permanent permit and is producing biodiesel for commercial distribution.

Batchelder says the company will take either brown or yellow grease, but is focused on brown grease for economic reasons: Yellow grease is used by people home brewing biodiesel and has become such a commodity, some are willing to pay for it. Brown grease is free. If Batchelder doesn’t take it, restaurants must pay a hauler to take it away and treat it before it can be incinerated or landfilled. And that usually happens out of state as NH has only two disposal sites, one of which is limited to Milford and Wilton residents and businesses only, Hannon says.

Batchelder has other reasons to be optimistic about his venture: A new Massachusetts law requires all diesel fuel and home heating oil sold in the Bay State to contain 2 percent biofuels in 2010, with an increase to 5 percent by 2013. “With the 2 percent thing that Massachusetts passed, you can’t make enough,” Batchelder says of biofuels, noting brown and yellow grease doesn’t lead to the food versus fuels debate that comes with other biodiesel sources. In 2008, about 700 million gallons of biodiesel was consumed in the United States, 60 percent of that from soybean oil, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Batchelder Biodiesel is working with Chris Langille at Keene State College and the Monadnock Biodiesel Collaborative to open a second refinery in Keene. The company is partnering with Keene State by funding a research lab related to biofuels and using students as interns.

With its recent permit from Nashua and the state, Batchelder will be able to produce up to 3,000 gallons a day in three shifts. And while the company is now funded by the founders, he expects it will turn a profit, not only from the sale of the fuel itself to haulers, but also because the company will be eligible for federal renewable energy tax credits. “We’ll get a little bigger, a little bigger, then a whole lot bigger,” Batchelder says of the company’s future. For more information, visit www.bbr-llc.com.