Environment: UK Company Turning Fatbergs into Biofuel

Every year there’s another disgusting discovery of a fatberg in London’s sewers. The photos of the cream-coloured masses dripping with fat eventually disappear but the fatbergs don’t. The good news is that a new company has found a way to turn these monstrous mounds of grease into valuable and green biofuel.

Titanic Problem

Fatbergs are created when fat and oils that are poured down the sink bind with debris in the sewage system. That can be anything from plastic bottles that fall into drains to things flushed down toilets like the dreaded wet wipes (“flushable” doesn’t mean “biodegradable”, guys).

Cooled fats solidify, causing massive blockages that break sewers and cost more than a million pounds a month for Thames Water alone. Just last month a massive fatberg was discovered under a group of fast-food restaurants in Belfast that workers have already spent six weeks trying to clear. The berg was so big that it rose out of the sewer and was imprinted with the manhole cover (left).

The videos of these huge lard deposits are grim viewing, to say the least but lucky for us one green fuel manufacturer is willing to get in there and make something brilliant from our fat and filth.

Argent Energy is collecting fatbergs from water companies, taking them to a processing plant in Ellesmere Port near Liverpool and turning them into oil.

Turning Blubber into Biofuel

The process is ingenious but disgusting. The fatberg is dumped into a pit and heated to liquify the fat, oil and grease. This mix is pumped through filters and cleaners to remove water, debris, slime and sludge. What’s left is a really clean oil that typically makes up 25-40% of the fatberg.

The oil is then mixed with other chemicals to create biodiesel, which is far better for the environment. Studies estimate that biodiesel is 80% cleaner than regular diesel.

The idea is in its infancy and this is the only site carrying out the process but it is already creating 90 million litres of biofuel a year. That’s only the tip of the fatberg: at the moment Argent’s weekly delivery of 30 tonnes of fatberg comes from a single Birmingham water treatment works.

There are nearly 9,000 others in the UK with plenty of fat to go around.

Don’t Be Fatheaded

This biofuel is hopefully a turning point in the fatberg phenomenon but while it reduces the problem it doesn’t erase it. We all need to be more careful about how we dispose of certain items.

Oils and fats shouldn’t be poured down the sink but thrown away alongside normal rubbish. Nothing plastic should ever be flushed down a toilet – including tampon applicators and condoms – and we have to realise that wet wipes and face wipes masquerade as eco-friendly when they’re absolutely not.

Wipes are designed to not dissolve and fall apart when wet so they’re going to be sticking around in sewers and seas for years to come. There are no fully biodegradable options on the market. Andrex’s washlets are the best as just 2% of their content is man-made fibres but even these can only be flushed in small quantities.

Our sewers can’t handle them on a national scale so we need to clean up our act – without resorting to damaging wet wipes.

 

by Jo Davey

 

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