Chicken-fat fuel factory to open soon

Chicken fat is proving an attractive and economical alternative to soybean oil – which accounts for around 90 percent of all biodiesel fuel stock, and is increasing in price significantly. Currently, Soybean oil costs around 72 cents a kilo, while chicken fat costs 42 cents.

Jerry Bagby and Harold Williams, through their company Global Fuels, plan to refine chicken fat and mix it with soybean oil to produce more than 13 million litres of biodiesel annually.

A nearby Tyson Foods poultry plant would be an ideal source of the low-quality fat, which is usually shipped away to be rendered and used as a cheap ingredient in pet food, soap and other products.

It’s likely that cheap animal fats will be increasingly sought as a resource for biodiesel, and many large corporations are beginning to realise this.

Tyson Foods announced in November that it had established a renewable-energy division that will be up and running this year. Perdue Farms and Smithfield Foods are making similar moves.

Vernon Eidman, a biofuel expert at the University of Minnesota, estimates that within five years the US will produce 4.5 billion litres of biodiesel and that half of it will be made from animal fat. By that time, soybean-based biodiesel will account for about 20 percent of the total, he said.