In the future we may be using recycled cooking oil to heat our homes according to studies which are being carried out at the moment. Boston University in the US is currently turning cooking oil into biofuel and plans to use this to cover their heating needs in the university. They are doing this to try to create a substitute fuel as the university are using 5000 gallons of oil each year at the moment. Everyone would love to have a cheaper source of fuel so this project is creating a lot of excitement and many people are buzzing about it.
Now before you begin pouring vegetable oil into your heating oil tank it is worth pointing out that it is not that straightforward. Cooking oil would have to be treated and optimised before it could be used as a heating fuel. The jets inside a boiler which work to turn heating oil into a mist would not be able to deal with cooking oil and would have to be altered accordingly. And there is also the issue with the fact that it costs more to buy cooking oil at the moment than it does to buy normal oil. It would be possible to use used cooking oil but it would need to be filtered before it would be suitable. If you were to stick used heating oil into your tank you would likely end up with one big mess.
It is more than likely going to be quite some time before we actually see cooking oil becoming a heating fuel. But the fact that there is so much used cooking oil that is just wasted means that it would be a shame not to develop some way of utilising it. A whole restaurant could be heated with the amount of cooking oil it uses. Plus there could be more than a few classrooms heated up with the oil that the school canteen could provide. The environment would also be better off if we used biofuels. Many of us are eagerly anticipating the time when these biofuels are used in the UK as well.
Getting the home heated up during winter can be very expensive. Fuel such as electricity and gas show no signs of coming down in price. Many individuals are now changing over to cheaper home heating oil though. When they do they always need their tanks filled with cheapest heating oil ensuring they can always heat their home in winter.
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