A renewable energy company conducted a pilot demonstration for a “first of its kind” renewable energy source at the Wastewater Pollution Control Facility in Wareham on Thursday, Dec. 12.

CF Technologies, a Massachusetts based company dedicated to using waste material to create renewable energy, is working on a way to convert brown grease, the grease discarded by restaurants into grease traps, into a renewable source of biodiesel fuel which could be a direct replacement for diesel.

According to Vice President and Project Manager Jessica Sweeney, brown grease needs to be disposed of and currently, the only way to do that is for a company to pump the grease out of a restaurant's grease trap and truck it to a landfill or incinerator. She added there is not currently a place in the South Coast to bring the waste product but with CF Technology's process, Wareham would become the place to bring brown grease.

If implemented, brown grease would be brought to the Wareham Wastewater Pollution Control Facility for processing. When trucks arrived with the grease it would be mostly water mixed with the discarded grease, fats and oils from restaurants. The facility would then separate the water and grease through a chemical process, turning the remaining oils into biodiesel fuel.

The Wareham facility possesses a machine called GreaseZilla which is used to separate grease from water before it is turned into biofuel.

The town purchased GreaseZilla in 2017 to separate water from grease and sell the grease but now, the town could make their own biofuel with the help of CF Technologies.

GreaseZilla is not currently operational but Sewer Department Director Scott Kraihanzel said there is a proposal to have the machine replaced or repaired at no cost to the town.

Sweeney added that the process is very clean and it does not create any harmful byproducts as a result of the chemical reactions taking place to create the biodiesel.

The biodiesel could be used as a direct replacement for diesel which means it could be used in diesel engines for cars, trucks and boats as well as diesel generators, including diesel powered heating systems in homes.

In its current state, the process for converting brown grease into biodiesel is still in the testing phase. The system at the pollution control facility is a small scale version of what a fully operational system would look like. Sweeney added that in the best case scenario, the fully operational system would be up and running sometime in 2026.

According to Sweeney, this represents a potential economic boost for Wareham because the town can charge a tipping fee to companies to take their brown grease and the town could then turn that into renewable biodiesel fuel.

She added the process would also have positive environmental effects because less harmful waste would end up in landfills and incinerators and would be turned into a renewable energy source.