How McDonalds’ reuse their cooking oil for fuel

Day 213 / 365

I like cooking every now and then, although I must admit I’m a novice at best. One thing I never understood about deep frying stuff is, what does one do with all the leftover oil? When you see cooking shows like Masterchef, the amount of oil they use to fry 3 chicken wings would easily last me a month on regular use.

Fast food joints face this problem as well. McDonald's in the UK have a nice way to reuse all the leftover oil from cooking french fries. They use it to run their delivery trucks!

Of course, the oil can’t be used as it is. Used cooking oil has water and bits of food particles in it, and so it needs to be refined and converted into biodiesel.

The raw oil is first heated again to remove any water from it. It is then passed through a series of filters through which the particles of food are removed from it. Even particles of the size of a few microns need to be removed.

This is great for McDonald's as they save a lot of fuel. And it’s great for the environment as well. By using this fuel, McDonald’s saves 1,675 tonnes of carbon per year.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The Oakland Buddha