Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station [Solid Waste Resource Renewal Group]

FOOD AND ORGANIC WASTE RECYCLING “STATE OF THE STATE” FOR NEW JERSEY  DECEMBER 2007

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection estimated that New Jerseyans generated a total of 1,600,452 tons of food waste in 2005, or 368 pounds of food waste per person for the year.  This amounts to more than a pound of food waste each day, and likely does not include the preparation waste which is generated at processing plants up the food chain, out of sight from the consumer.  For example, Anheuser Busch alone receives gets credit for about the same amount as the total for food waste generated within Essex County.  This suggests that total food waste in the state could be greater than the initial estimate indicates, if such processing waste is included.

Even without estimating possible additions for food processing residues, there are at least 1,380,015 tons of food waste which are not currently being recycled.  New Jersey, with its dense population and proximity to food waste generators, has attracted a group of entrepreneurs who recognize our food waste as the resource it can be—for production of energy or fuel, for production of fertilizer, and for production of compost and other soil amendments.  These recyclers together will create a sustainable industry for New Jersey, which can offer food waste generators—and the State—the following benefits:

Benefits to Businesses and Schools:

  • Reduce trash bills by reducing “tipping fee” and other fees per ton
  • Create cleaner back end, with less escape of smelly liquids, etc. from dumpsters
  • Create participatory system which involves all employees, students, and other community members in separating a former waste to become a useful energy/fuel or soil product
  • Give businesses and schools the opportunity to “shine” environmentally, rather than being criticized for their performance
  • Reduce carbon foot print and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the school or business, and prepare for accrual of tradable carbon credits

Benefits to Counties and Municipalities

  • Enhanced recycling rate, for better compliance with state recycling mandates
  • Preserve valuable landfill space
  • Help attract and retain successful food waste recycling businesses for a county—or for the state or region
  • Reduce carbon footprint of the county or municipality
  • Reduced distances for transport of one of the heaviest and wettest of wastes, which in turn reduces  wear on the roads, and the air pollution and greenhouse gases from longer distance transport

Nora Goldstein, editor of BioCycle magazine, estimates that approximately 60% of food waste is generated at non-residential entities, such as restaurants, supermarkets, cafeterias, schools, institutions, etc. Recycling non-residential waste would make a significant impact on the reduction of waste to landfills and incinerators.

This packet is intended to be an introduction to food waste recycling and to the technologies being developed for manufacturing of useable commodities that would enrich the state environmentally and economically.

 

Why Recycle Food Waste?

Solid Waste is Within Your Power

 

What is solid waste?  Solid waste, more commonly known as garbage or trash, did not start as garbage or trash—it was originally something we used, enjoyed, looked forward to consuming.  Garbage or trash is simply a designation for some material which has only changed in our view of it, ceasing to be something usable, becoming only something to be gotten away, out of sight, out of mind.

Yet trash is also something which—in part because it is only our naming that makes it trash—is a piece of all our environmental, social, and economic problems which is within our own power to change.  Consider the following:

  • Someone—perhaps ultimately, each of us someones—pays for each ton of trash which is sent to a landfill or incinerator
  • In a landfill, many resources such as metal become lost to us—unless we dig them up out of what is a toxic and reactive stew at some point in the future
  • In a landfill, food waste and other organic wastes (paper, yard waste, etc.) do not biodegrade as they would if left in a compost pile.  The lack of air and water force what digestion which occurs to be anaerobic.  This produces methane gases, some portion of which can be collected from landfills.  On average, considering landfills which collect methane (some just for flaring) and those which do not, New Jersey loses about two thirds of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere.  See further discussion below.
  • Recycling food waste can be less expensive than trashing it, with some effort taken to change one’s hauling contract, and reconfigure collection containers inside and outside the facility. 
  • Generally, facilities which recycle food waste find themselves increasing their recycling of other commodities, like cardboard and paper—and find that their trash savings increase even more as a result.  This comes, in part, from taking a look at the mystery of your trash system and your trash bill, and understanding the power you have with respect to the resources that trash represents. 

 

Getting Ready to Exercise Your Power

How is your trash collected?  What things are separated within the building?  Who does the separation, and who picks up the separated items?  How often does that happen?

After things are collected internally, what kind of container are they taken to for pick up by a hauler?  If trash is sent to a dumpster, you are probably charged by volume—a sort of assumption that the container is full, and that the trash in that container has a certain average weight per each unit of volume.  If the container is not full, you are paying for air each time it gets emptied.  If the weight to volume ratio is less than the assumed value, you are paying a higher per ton cost for each unit of garbage. 

If the trash is sent to a dumpster, your trash bill is a dual one—a combination of a flat fee for pick up and a per ton fee for the garbage within. 

In contemplating any change to the system, you will need to consider the following:

  • Internal separation of materials for recycling—what containers are needed, where must they be to collect all of the material desired, what signage and education is needed to foster proper separation, who is doing the separation
  • Who will transfer the separated material to the containers chosen for readying the recycled material to be picked up
  • What containers are best for the new material, given how much you generate, and how degradable it is; how can you configure all your containers to make space for the new containers
  • What should the pick up frequency be for not only the newly separated materials but for the thus-reduced volumes of residual trash and of other recyclables. 

 

Food waste is generally most efficiently collected in either a compactor, if the waste generation is high enough, or for those who generate less food waste, in wheeled cart containers, which do not allow leakage of liquid from the cart.  While a compactor does not need pick up service until it is full, wheeled carts may require pick up several times a week, up to every other day.  If this becomes an extra cost, you will have the opportunity to make it up with the reduced volume of residual trash, so that your overall trash cost should go down.  Resources for this planning and for doing calculations are noted in a separate handout.

Role of Recycling Food Waste and/or Other Organic Materials in Reducing Greenhouse Gas Production

Recycling food waste (and other wastes) is within our power—and that, in turn, makes it within our power to reduce greenhouse gases, and protect our children from the worst impacts of climate change.  As noted above, food waste and other organics degrade to create methane in our landfills.  This degradation makes our landfills the primary source of methane emissions in the United States.  Methane is a greenhouse gas which is usually assigned a greenhouse warming potential of 21 to 23 times that of carbon dioxide.  However, the life span of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is 100 or 200 years, while that of methane is only approximately 12 year.  Viewed in a 20 year time frame, rather than a 100 year one, methane has 62 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—that is, during its 12 short years of life, methane is operating to trap at least 62 times the heat of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. 

Each generator, then, who ceases sending food waste to a landfill reduces production of a gas with 62 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide—and thus also reduces carbon footprint.  Sending food waste for recycling rather than for disposal thus sets an entity up for qualifying for carbon credits under any trading or other program which will be established in the future.  A generator need not even do its own calculations or justify the formula it uses for calculation.  By signing up for the voluntary WasteWise federal branding program (see handout), the entity may have its recycling figures translated into greenhouse gas reductions gratis.  Indeed, the entity will receive free promotional material representing its food waste (and other) recycling efforts graphically.  This material can be used to promote the entity’s commitment to sustainability, which many businesses and other entities have in turn parlayed into a competitive advantage with customers and others. 

Limitations on Landfill Space?

In the year 2000, BioCycle Magazine reported that space estimates showed that the state of New Jersey had only until 2010 before its landfill capacity is exhausted, at its then current rate of fill.  It was also estimated that existing NJ incinerators were operating at 95% of their capacity. 

These figures, however, do not tell the whole story.  Existing New Jersey landfills have additional land available to them.  This land can be used to construct additional landfill cells; indeed, the landfills may be entitled to have these additional landfill cells approved, whether or not residents and businesses adjoining the new cells oppose them.  Moreover, new technologies such as garbage compacting technologies or conversion of landfills to bioreactor landfills will extend the life of many landfills.  Thus, many counties are not faced with an immediate end to their landfill space. 

Eventually, of course, New Jersey landfill space will be expended, and all waste will have to go out of state, as some waste is already doing.  Slowing the rate of use of total New Jersey landfill space is advisable, since once New Jersey space is totally expended, the only options for landfill disposal will out of state locations, with more costly hauling fees due to the distance and fuel costs.  Indeed, landfill space will become increasingly distant. 

Creation of a New Sustainable Industry Making Products Essential to New Jersey’s Future Quality of Life

Food waste and organic waste recycling can create a sustainable industry for the State, creating environmental, economic and equity benefits.  Specifically, this new local industry can reduce transport costs and burdens, provide essential products and local capital, produce jobs both directly and indirectly, and provide revenue for hosting municipalities. 

Food and yard wastes are heavy—they have a high ratio of mass to volume—when compared to other wastes.  Indeed, even paper, another organic waste, adds up weight rather quickly.  Food wastes and yard wastes also have a high percentage of water. 

These traits combine to make transport of the wastes to distant landfills particularly costly and messy.  Creation of a food waste/organics waste recycling industry within New Jersey reduces transportation distances and costs, as well as the air and greenhouse gas pollution which comes from diesel trucks with low gas mileage over the roads. 

New Jersey desperately needs the products which a food waste and organics waste recycling industry can provide it—soil amendments, organic fertilizers, and fuel/energy products.  Both oil and soil are ancient products of the Earth—both have taken many centuries to get to the level which exists now.  If we squander these resources in a few decades, they will not recover in time for our children to enjoy the quality of life we have come to know.  Soil can be protected and conserved with compost and organic fertilizers made from food waste/organic waste.  Oil can be conserved by replacement with biofuels/bioenergy derived from food waste and organic wastes. 

Sales of these products—particularly locally—both engender revenues within the State and will often serve to keep capital within the State, as purchases of products from other states or abroad is replaced by in-State purchases.  Thus, purchase of soil amendments and biofuels made within the state will not only create revenue here, but substitute for purchases of fuel and soil products from elsewhere. 

Past studies, notably the study done for the Northeast Recycling Council by R.W. Beck Associates in 2000, currently being updated, have documented that the currently existing recycling industry generates substantial numbers of jobs.  Indeed, the 1,870 recycled product manufacturers alone employed 136,000 people in 2000, or approximately 4%of the overall manufacturing employment in the Northeast region.  See the full report at http://www.nerc.org/documents /recycling_economic_information_study_final_report_2000.pdf
;summary at http://www.nerc.org/documents/rei_report_highlights.html.

Both Converted Organics and Peninsula Compost have agreed to pay per ton fees to their host municipalities.  This provides a source of revenue to municipalities; one which could be used to provide resources to boost generator diversion to these facilities (which will in turn generate more host municipality fees).  Converted Organics will be located in Keasbey (part of Woodbridge Township) and do aerobic digestion, producing fertilizer products.  Peninsula Compost will be in Burlington County, and will produce compost, in a facility with enclosed initial processing and additional processing/curing in covered windrows. 

When Will Our New Sustainable Industry Arrive?

We already have at least two food waste recycling facilities in New Jersey, both of which accept only limited amounts of food waste, utilizing mainly large amounts of other organic waste. 

TerraCycle started with a small scale facility at the New Jersey EcoComplex to manufacture vermicompost.  Currently, its chief facility is a vermicompost tea facility which takes its own vermicompost and that purchased from other sources and bottles vermicompost tea as plant food.  The plant food is sold in Home Depots and other stores across the country. 

AgChoice has a small covered-windrow composting facility in Sussex County, New Jersey, and composts chiefly horse manure; the company does its own hauling from nearby horse farms, charging a tipping fee to the farmers.  The company also uses food waste from several local supermarkets in its recipe, and supplies compost to local landscapers. 

We are expecting our first large-scale food waste recycling facility in early to mid 2008.  This plant, called Converted Organics, will be in Keasbey at what New Jersey Department Of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson has reportedly called “New Jersey’s recycling mega mall.”  The company has had substantial support from Middlesex County, which sees it as part of an ongoing sustainability initiative, and of Bayshore Recycling, the location which will house it.  Converted Organics will use an accelerated aerobic digestion process to manufacture fertilizer, rather than simply compost.  Indeed, it already has pre-production orders for a substantial amount of its product. 

We are also eagerly awaiting a first transfer station for the state, one which would transfer food waste from smaller vehicles to larger ones for more environmental and economical transport of the food waste to available end destinations.  Currently, those destinations are in Pennsylvania, and include on-farm compost locations which are developing the capacity to compost not only vegetative and bread food waste, but also meat, cheeses, and post-consumer wastes.  This capacity will allow restaurants and cafeterias to begin recycling in the near future.  The transfer station will also allow some water reduction, to reduce weight transported, and picking out of contamination, which makes the waste more attractive to the end destination. 

Other facilities which are in various stages of development and permit applications are Trenton Fuel Works, Peninsula Compost, Valorga (through Bayshore Recycling and partners). 

Individual on site digesters and disposal units from Comax and InSinkErator are available to generators now. 

 

Feedstock—Food Waste and Related Organic Feedstocks

Not all food waste is created equal.  The recycling technology to be used, or the other use to which the waste will be put, may require that some food waste be separated from other food waste for use by that particular option.  Many or most generators want a recycling option which will accept the broadest range of food waste—and perhaps other organic waste.  A brief run down of food waste divisions and of other organic waste which may be recyclable using the various technologies is included here.  Please be sure to get specifics on acceptable waste for the option you choose. 

Food Waste and Food Waste

  • Edible food which can be used for feeding hungry people
  • Vegetative food waste, bread, eggshells, acceptable for composting
  • Mix of all food waste, perhaps excluding shells from shellfish, bones, or other such exclusions
  • The definition for food waste in New Jersey includes food waste related paper, including paper wrappings, etc.   

Paper Waste

  • Recyclable office paper, newsprint, corrugated cardboard
  • “Other paper,” a reported category in the NJDEP tonnage reporting system.  This seems to include plastic coated papers, such as freezer boxes, and may include items recycled by some counties, such as “chipboard,” the cardboard which cereal boxes and other food items. 

Yard Wastes

  • Grass clippings
  • Leaves
  • Yard trimmings, which may include woody material
  • Tree parts or bigger woody items

Other waste wood

  • Untreated construction debris
  • Treated construction debris
  • Pallets

Biosolids

  • Although this may not be a feedstock generators are thinking of, this is also an organic waste which can be recycled into a variety of products
  • This may become a more significant waste is capture of this material, with food waste which has been sent through a in sink disposal unit, becomes possible at some point before treatment at a sewer treatment plant. 

 

Recovery Options—On Site

On-Site Composters

Composting is the controlled aerobic digestion of organic material, creating as an end product a soil amendment which improves soil health and nutrient uptake and plant growth.  As noted below, it can be done in an enclosed setting, known as in-vessel composting.  A small scale in-vessel composter may be perfect for a generator of food waste, provided there is adequate staff or volunteer to feed, operate, and maintain the composter.  If there is sufficient personnel to invest in this valuable activity, the facility using the composter will have the benefit of the compost to use in landscape applications on site.  Compost can be used for top dressing or incorporation into the soil.

Montclair State University has recently installed a a Model 512 Aerobic Digester manufactured by BW Organics in Sulphur Springs, TX.  It cost $25,000, which was paid for with a grant.  Its capacity is 6 cubic yards.  It is designed for a maximum daily input of 2 cubic yards.  Compost may be harvested after 3 days.  When working to capacity, 2 cubic yards of compost may be harvested whenever 2 cubic yards of food residue is added.  If lesser amounts of food residue are added, lesser amounts of compost may be harvested.  If the amount of food residue added is substantially below 2 cubic yards, the food residue may remain in the vessel until harvesting is required or until the unit contains 6 cubic yards.  Currently, Dr. Nicholas Smith-Sebasto, who wrote the grant and organized this project, is the sole person working on the project.  It takes about 1 hour every Tuesday and Thursday to gather and weigh the food residues, load them into the bio-mixer along with the bulking agent/carbon source, and transfer them to the vessel.  The final product is being used for landscaping projects on campus.

 

In Sink Disposal Units/Volume Reducing Units

In sink disposal units grind food waste put down the drain with running water.  This potentially produces a pre-processed material which might be very advantageous for many recycling methods, e.g. for composting or anaerobic digestion.  Building on this advantage would require a system which allows capture of the solids at some point before treatment in a sewerage plant.  This is a current research project of SWRRG, part of a larger systems examination which we are doing.

Disposal units use some additional water and energy.  There are also potential problems with grease or solids build up in the sewer system, or increased loadings on the sewer system, leading to potential combined sewer overflow problems.  Some municipalities still do not allow them as a result of the latter.  Their chief advantage is removal of some of the most putrescible materials from trash, reducing odor and attraction to animal and other pests. 

InSinkErator sells equipment called the aqua saver which act as an on-demand water saving system for an In-sink-erator commercial disposer.  The system senses the load to the disposer motor and regulates the amount of water needed for grinding or non grinding, as the case may be.

Rutgers has a Somat pulper which grinds food and napkin waste, and squeezes out much of the water.  The resulting material is transferred to wheeled barrels for pick up by a pig farmer.  Rutgers saves more than $100,000 per year through this system.  The system also acts as an example of the potentially best use of processed material—diversion to a recycling facility, rather than simply to a sewerage plant, which may or may not be extracting ultimate resource value from the material.

On-Site Digestion Units

The Comax BicX2 uses natural micro organisms to decompose food into carbon dioxide and water and drain it into the sewer system without a sludge remainder.  Effluent from decomposed food has been shown to be safe and does not have a negative effect on the sewage system.  At the Manor Restaurant in West Orange, where two of these units have been installed, the owner finds that the chief advantage over an in-sink disposal unit has been that the volume into the sewer system is greatly reduced over that emitted by the disposal units.  Moreover, the garbage at the rear has been vastly reduced, and odors avoided.  The two units handle the food waste from the four restaurants which the owner has in the area. 

Advantages include reduced garbage expenses, reduced odors, reduced pests and rodents, no harmful garbage leachate leaking out of the garbage containers, no clots to clog the drain, and improvement of all over conditions in the rear.  No neighborhood complaints are generally received. 

The materials which the digestion unit can handle are vegetable, fish, meat, fruit, grass, noodle, bread waste and other food waste, except shells.  It is not meant to handle metal, paper, wood, bone, plastic. 

Depending on the food material inserted into BicX2 the decomposition time varies.  Rice, bread, noodle takes least amount of time, then fish and meat.  Vegetable and fruits, while onion skin, lobster and shrimp shells, vegetable stems, and roots take extra time. 

The electricity/water consumption for machine functions is minimal. 

Chemically testing of the water and waste out from BicX showed that the total organic carbon amount decreased over time while the oxygen demand rises.  The pH of samples depended upon the waste deposited; the temperature at which the machine runs may also be a factor. 

 

Recovery Options Involving Hauling Off Site

Hunger Programs

New Jersey is blessed with an excellent system of primary food banks, listed at www.swpg.rutgers.edu.  These food banks are supplemented by a network of smaller food banks and soup kitchens, and a network of faith based and community organizations which distribute food to the hungry. 

One of the chief sources of food to the hungry is Farmers Against Hunger.  This program collects surplus produce from farms; some of this comes from volunteer gleaning in the fields.  Produce is trucked to a network of organizations across the state, in order to provide hungry people with the nutrition in fresh produce.  

Supermarkets, restaurants and cafeterias have, in the past, successfully diverted usable food to the hungry.  Clearly, food waste which can be accepted by programs feeding the hungry must meet health and safety standards, and must be something for which the receiving program has a need, as well as storage and refrigeration space.  Food banks and other hunger networks across the state have recently received funding for additional refrigeration capacity, so this is a more viable option.  Care needs to be taken to assure that the donating generator is not passing on a waste problem, because there are food bank clients to consume all of something before it expires or otherwise becomes unusable. 

The ability of a receiving food bank or other hunger organization to receive food is limited by the refrigeration/freezer equipment it has and its storage space.  Recently, substantial monies became available to update equipment; check with a potential recipient to be sure it has the capacity to receive your donations.

Composting or Aerobic conversion

Composting or aerobic conversion is the microbial decomposition of organic material under controlled conditions in the presence of oxygen, typically out of doors.  Food waste can be composted at least four ways:  static pile, aerated windrow/pile, in-vessel and vermi-composting.  The mixing of the different food waste components (paper for carbon, produce and bakery for organic components and cellulose etc) is crucial for the quality of the end product and to avoid nuisance odors, when not performed in an enclosed vessel or structure.  A section above covered the possibility of composting at a generator site, but many generators will choose the ease of having their food and other organic waste hauled off site to a larger facility.

  • The process of static pile composting mixes the organic waste into piles. 
  • Aerated windrow/pile composting mixes the waste into long rows or piles that are periodically aerated (by embedded pipes or turned) to expose the waste materials and microbes to air.  Windrows in New Jersey will have to be under cover, such as those which Peninsula Compost is planning. 
  • In-vessel composting, which is beneficial for large operations by reducing odors and eliminating weather as a factor, mixes and stores the waste in enclosed equipment that controls the conditions of aeration, temperature and moisture. 
  • Vermi-composting uses worms to breakdown the food waste via digestion, where the excrement is the product.

 

Converted Organics, scheduled to open sometime in 2008 in Keasbey, New Jersey, will be using a proprietary expedited “aerobic digestion” system, performed in a building (in vessel) to create an organic fertilizer product, with higher plant nutrient levels than compost, and, as with most fertilizers, a more compact, transportable form (liquid or pellets).  This will not replace compost, which functions primarily to improve overall soil health, including ability to support plant life and promote uptake of nutrients, with some fertilization also occurring.  Converted Organics will create an alternate product, one which even more directly replaces products typically made from oil. 

It is also interesting to note that, nationwide the consumption of fossil fuels for agricultural purposes is estimated at 17%.  The largest portion of that percentage, approximately 31%, is for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizers (including lime and soil conditioners).  Thus converting organic waste into soil amendments or fertilizers decreases our dependence on fossil fuels and the contamination of our soil and air, while protecting and enhancing our dwindling topsoil.

Anaerobic Digestion

 

Anaerobic Digestion is a naturally occurring biochemical process that breaks down organic material via bacteria in a low or no oxygen environment.  One of the chief products is biogas (60-70% methane gas, 30-40% carbon dioxide, and small percentage each of hydrogen sulfide, water vapor, oxygen and trace hydrocarbons).  The methane is separated/purified by removing the carbon dioxide, water, hydrogen sulfide and other impurities prior to use.  The end product is bio-methane, which is chemically identical to natural gas and can be used in the same applications and is therefore a renewable fuel.  The carbon dioxide is also a marketable product. 

The Rutgers EcoComplex hosted a pilot project to use methane from landfill gas, purified and converted to liquid natural gas, in specially designed garbage trucks.  Since these garbage trucks were built to operate on LNG rather than diesel, they emit far less pollution, particularly particulate matter than diesel trucks.  This has given rise to a proposal to site digesters adjacent to urban areas in northern New Jersey, so that food waste from the neighborhoods can be used to fuel trucks which could then be used back in the neighborhoods, reducing pollution there. 

Anaerobic digestion also produces an organic residue which can be used much as compost can, to amend the soil.  This multiplicity of products makes anaerobic digestion an attractive option. 

Food Waste Diversion to Animal Feed

Replacing animal feed such as corn (for swine) and grain (for cows) with a food waste product would reduce our dependence on fossil fuel, since corn and grain are grown using substantial amounts of fossil fuel energy and fossil fuel fertilizer.  Studies by Dr. Michael Westendorf of Rutgers have shown that the nutritional composition of “plate waste” make it an effective alternative to agriculturally grown feed.  Food waste, either plate waste, or a mixture of preparation waste and plate waste, can be heat treated to destroy pathogens; indeed the federal Swine Health Act requires a certain amount of cooking of anything containing plate waste or prepared foods.  The resultant mixture can be extruded or dried to produce feed pellets that have a longer shelf life than grain or corn.  Fresh, wet food waste scraps (plate waste) can be ground at the source to make nutritious slurry or bulked for transport for immediate feeding.  The swine industry in NJ is currently employing this method of food waste recycling. 

New Jersey had a state of the art plant to create feed from food waste; the plant ceased operation several years ago, both because corn/grain was too close in cost to the feed product, and because the deregulation of waste across the state greatly reduced the tipping fees the plant could ask generators to pay. 

 

P-Series fuels

Food waste can also be used to produce a fuel blend called P-Series fuels.  P-series fuels are a blend of ethanol or methanol, methyltetrahydrofuran (MTHF) and pentanes.  Butane is added in cold weather.  The methyltetrahydrofuran is made from food waste and other organic wastes using heat and a chemical process; the pentanes are stripped off of liquid natural gas as it comes out of the ground, during the refining process to make it usable for home or business use. 

More well-known ethanol/methanol blends are E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) and M85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline);these are made for flexible fuel modified vehicles.  Ethanol is generally produced from grains and other feed stocks (food waste) by breaking them down into simple sugars, then adding yeast to induce fermentation, which produces ethanol and carbon dioxide. 

P-series fuels, on the other hand, have only 45% ethanol or methanol, and the remaining components are gasoline free, being the methyltetrahydrofuran and pentanes.  This blend  produces less carbon monoxide and non-methane hydrocarbons thus avoiding methane (a greenhouse gas) release into the environment.  P-series fuels can also be used in flexible fuel modified vehicles, although some slight vehicle modifications may be needed, so that either E-85 or P-Series Fuels can be used.  Automobile manufacturers have been reluctant to make these modifications until P-Series fuels are available. 

Bio-Diesel

Biodiesel is a replacement for traditional diesel fuel which is made from biological sources, generally vegetable fats/oils or animal fats.  Some farmers in Connecticut have used a modified hot water heater to make the biodiesel, and have found that running farm equipment on 100% biodiesel greatly reduces engine noise.  Trenton Fuel Works has perfected a process to make biodiesel from cellulosic materials, rather than fats.  TFW will be able to use not only food waste, but also cellulosic manures such as horse manure, yard waste (including leaves and grass clippings), paper, and cellulosic agricultural wastes such as corn stover. 

Generally, biodiesel is used in a blend with diesel.  Traditional biodiesel, made from fats, gels more quickly at cold temperatures than diesel.  As noted, Trenton Fuel Works will be manufacturing a biodiesel made from cellulosic materials; this biodiesel will not have this problem, thus there are no limitations on cold starting properties. 

Biodiesel reduces both greenhouse gas and other air pollution emissions significantly, even in blends. 

Biodiesel will clean out injectors and fuel lines, and the first few tanks of it will clean up accumulated crud. 

Several companies are looking at establishing biodiesel manufacturing

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