Waste cooking oil powering vehicles

By MORGAN BAKER

For the Pilot

In a back room of a skinny garage on Kalispell Avenue, Evan Waggoner, 20, pours thick, dark liquid from a gallon-sized plastic bottle through a mesh strainer into a 50-gallon metal drum. A brown, carbonized sludge accumulates at the top, which he stirs around with a putty knife to allow any of the remaining good oil to flow through.

"This is the waste oil from Wasabi," he said, referring to the sushi bar on Spokane. "It's really clean. Very few heavy particles, you don't have to do very much with it."

In the next room is a whole garage full of waste oil from local restaurants — Craggy Range, Wasabi and Red Caboose — all donated for free instead of paying $30 to have it taken away and trashed, according to Waggoner.

The badly burned fats, typically vegetable oil, gets turned into biodiesel for Waggoner's personal use and friends who all use biodiesel in their vehicles. He charges a nominal cost, about $2 a gallon.

The reason he charges such a low price is because the brew he makes in his garage is for testing purposes and is not certified by the American Society for Testing and Materials, the organization that defines the commercial requirements of everything from biodiesel to railroad steel.

"We use home-testing kits to make sure of its quality, but you'd need a much more controlled set up to get the certification of the ASTM," Waggoner said.

Waggoner and his older brother, Cory, sell ASTM-grade biodiesel at their service station in Columbia Falls just off of U.S. Highway 2. Renewable Fuel Station is a small unfurnished shack containing two black silos, 10,000 gallons of high-quality biodiesel, in an otherwise unoccupied acre lot.

Cory Waggoner, 22, says he has about 100 regular customers who make 70 to 80 fuel purchases a week. They also have a delivery system in place, providing biodiesel to farmers.

But the biodiesel at the Columbia Falls station, although ASTM-certified, sells for $3.35 a gallon, 35 cents above the state average, according to StateMaster.com, a consumer information site.

The Waggoners charge a higher price because the fuel is shipped here from a manufacturer in Salem, Ore. To reduce the price, Cory, who lives in Willits, Calif., plans on setting up a biodiesel manufacturing plant of his own nearby.

The idea of bringing renewable energy to the Whitefish area is Cory's long-time dream. When he moved to California at 18, he started noticing vehicles advertising the use of biodiesel. He enrolled in classes at the Solar Living Institute, a school devoted to the study and development of renewable energy technology. With family money, he set up the business in Columbia Falls.

The decision to bring biodiesel to Montana is a tricky one. Biodiesel has many limitations. It works in all diesel engines, but it must be blended with regular diesel; otherwise, it will act as a solvent, wearing away parts in the fuel injection system.

During the winter, biodiesel congeals, becoming a solid. The best way to prevent this is to use 20 percent biodiesel to 80 percent regular diesel.

The only way around all these problems is to undergo a straight vegetable oil conversion process. The Waggoner brothers shelled out roughly $2,000 apiece to put their cars through the conversion process, but since the availability of biodiesel is limited to a few providers in Montana, it seems unlikely many will be getting a vegetable oil conversion in the near future.

The Waggoners are aware of the limitations. Cory is currently researching anti-gel agents so biodiesel can be used during long, cold winters. He is also aware of the contradictions involved in the production of biodiesel, such as using coal-generated electricity to power the machinery to make the biodiesel.

He sees it as part of a broader plan to bring, not just one, but several alternative energies to the Whitefish area.

"I'm looking into solar panels, and wind mills to provide the power we need," he said.