Scientists have identified a new and unlikely raw material to produce biodiesel using alligator fat.
Amid growing concern that using food crops to produce biodiesel fuel will raise the price of food, the fat from the reptile has been found to be similar in composition to the fuel derived from soybeans and met nearly all of the official standards for high quality biodiesel.
The research report documenting gator fat’s suitability for biofuel production appears in ACS’ journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Rakesh Bajpai and colleagues at the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette note that most of the 700 million gallons of biodiesel produced in the United States came from soybean oil. The search for non-food sources of biodiesel already has identified a number of unlikely candidates, including spent oil from deep fryers in fast-food restaurants and sewage.
The scientists realized that alligator fat could join that list.
Each year, the alligator meat industry disposes of about 15 million pounds of alligator fat in landfills.
They showed in laboratory experiments that oil from alligator fat can easily be converted into biodiesel. The oil actually was more suitable for biodiesel production that oil from some other animal fats.
The gator biodiesel was similar in composition to biodiesel from soybeans, and met nearly all of the official standards for high quality biodiesel.
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