Out of the frying pan and into the furnace

A local company is selling heating oil for homes and diesel fuel for motor vehicles made in part from recycled vegetable oil and animal fat.

"We're using something that's already been used and would have been thrown away in the past," said Brian Fernandes, sales director for Mass Biofuel, a subsidiary of Fisher-Churchill oil company. "The beauty of the product is that it's not coming right from the fields. That would be a waste of land."

The 80/20 Green Blend is 20 percent B-100 - animal fat and vegetable oil processed at a special facility - and 80 percent home heating oil.

The vegetable oil and animal fat collected from local restaurants is processed at a facility in West Bridgewater owned by MBP Bioenergy.

MBP is working on a patent for the transesterfication process it uses to treat recycled oil and convert it into B-100.

At $3.89 per gallon, it's the same price as Fisher-Churchill's traditional heating oil. It is also comparable in price to that of two local oil companies, Prevett Oil Company in Westwood, which charges $3.89 per gallon, and John R. Lynch & Sons in Dedham, which charges $3.90 per gallon.

The average household uses about 1,200 gallons of oil in a year, said Fernandes.

"Our view is that if it's the same price as regular home heating oil, why wouldn't everyone use it?" said Fernandes, noting that Mass Biofuel customers who sign an agreement under what the company calls its cap program can get their fuel for $2.94 per gallon.

The Milton Street company also sells an 80/20 Premium Green Blend of bioheat with 20 percent B-100 and 80 percent ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel, as opposed to the standard home heating oil. Fernandes says diesel fuel is basically the same thing as home heating oil, but that the low-sulfur diesel in the company's premium bioheat is "a cleaner product to begin with than the regular fuel oil most people have in their homes."

The premium product costs five cents more per gallon than the regular green blend.

The oil used to make B-100 is collected from local restaurants and processed to make bioheat and biodiesel to fuel diesel engines.

Biodiesel is a blend of low-sulfur diesel and 5 percent, 20 percent or 99 percent B-100 - depending on the grade.

The reason for the vastly different grades is that trying to run a car or bus on fuel with a high proportion of B-100 is difficult, if not impossible, in cold weather. The cold has the tendency to make the substance solidify, said Fernandes.

"You would never want to run 100 percent of (B-100)," said Fernandes. "If you do, there's a chance it will gel," in cold weather.

West Roxbury resident Jeff Trueblood just filled up his Volkswagen Golf with pure B-100 for the first time this spring. "The car runs better. It's better for the engine," said Trueblood. "It's 35 percent more fuel-efficient."

Mass Biofuel delivers the B-100 in 50-gallon shipments, said Trueblood. He gets 45 miles to the gallon with it, and can go for about two weeks on one tank of gas. He and his wife share the car, he says, and use it every day.

Trueblood, a computer programmer with two children, says he likes the renewable aspect of biofuel. The family has solar panels on their house and recycles as much as it can, he said. "The main advantage is that it is nontoxic and biodegradable. We can store it in the garage without any concerns."

Daily News staff writer Anna Kivlan can be reached at 781-433-8336 or akivlan@cnc.com.