Trap waste. Brown grease. Residual Fats. Restaurant waste. Fats, Oils and Grease. Or just ‘FOG.’ Call it any name, and it’s still one of the most intractable municipal waste challenges. Washed down the drain, it’s the leading cause for combined/sanitary sewer overflows, according to a 2008 EPA report to Congress. Dumped into landfills, it breaks down into methane, which is 72X more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas over a 20 year period, and often creates noxious odors for surrounding communities.

Pumped into anaerobic digesters in small or sporadic quantities, biogas is unevenly produced and often unusable. Efforts to continuously introduce any significant quantity of unconditioned FOG are thwarted with clogs, backups, scum blankets, grease balls and disrupted digester operations. Engineering firms, liquid waste haulers and wastewater treatment plant operators have been searching for a solution. And rightly so.

According to industry statistics, more than 4.5 billion pounds of FOG grease are produced in the United States each year. As our population grows, so too does this problem. With heavy concentration in our nation’s cities and suburbs, it also produces a ‘not-in-my-backyard’ disposal headache. FOG smells. It sticks to everything. It has a variable composition which includes wastewater, animal fats, vegetable oils, food, refuse and other organic material. This variable mixture of wastes makes it essential to employ processing methods that effectively and responsibly address 100% of the waste components in FOG, and don’t leave residual wastes or byproducts for disposal down the road.