What We Can Do

The Earth's natural resources are everyone's responsibility. From large corporations to young kids and families, the plight of our lakes, rivers, streams and oceans belong to us all. Thankfully, the process is not as overwhelming as it may seem. There are several actions that can be taken to prevent water pollution and safeguard the environment.

Dispose of cooking oils in a plastic container that can be transported to a local landfill or grease bin. Restaurants worldwide now have to store old cooking oils in large bins (known as grease bin) and then send the oil for recycling and/or transportation to a nearby landfill. This action will prevent water pollution that would otherwise occur if the oils were flushed down a toilet or washed down a sink drain. Severe damage can occur as the oils harden and destroy sewage and water systems ($ millions are spent nationally, every year, to clean up sewer spills associated with illegal kitchen oil disposal).

GRT is a recycling processing and trading company in the alternative fuel industry. We work to advance our technology to serve the emerging field of renewable energy with technologies and solutions to help these alternatives become commercially viable.

Our products help the effort to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve management of scarce resources, become less dependent on foreign oil with an alternative energy solution to the fuel industry, and have a long-term positive impact on our society.

Bio Diesel (Organic Fuels Biodiesel)

Renewable

Biodiesel is fuel made from natural vegetable oils, animal fats, and advanced non-food alternative crops. Plants produce their seed oils from little more than sunlight, soil, and air, while animal fats are produced when an animal eats plant oils. So, with careful management of these resources, keeping the total cycle of energy in mind, we can ensure the continued availability of biodiesel feedstock, making biodiesel a truly renewable resource. What’s more, biodiesel burns clean, which keeps our skies and soil clean, which means we can keep on growing.

Sustainable

"Sustainability defined: Meeting today's needs for environmental stewardship, economic prosperity, and quality of life without compromising future generations' ability to meet these needs for themselves."

Efficient

The energy yield of biodiesel is tremendous. Biodiesel can actually return more than three times the amount of energy required to produce it. That leaves petroleum and other biofuels in the dust, some of which require more energy to make them than can be gained by burning them.

In terms of effective use of fossil energy resources, biodiesel yields around 3.2 units of fuel product energy for every unit of fossil energy consumed in the life cycle. By contrast, petroleum diesel's life cycle yields only 0.83 units of fuel product energy per unit of fossil energy consumed.

In the broadest strokes, biodiesel manufacture is the process of changing the properties of various natural oils to make them suitable for ignition in engines. We take vegetable oil and make it less viscous, more resistant to extreme conditions and in many other ways more suitable for real-world fuel applications than plain old vegetable oil. This means more energy can be transferred from the sun, to the plants, to the oils, and into the fuel.

Using biodiesel also displaces the use of petroleum fuels, which extends our global oil supply. We’re here to make fossil fuels obsolete, but we think slowing our rate of consumption of crude oil is a good thing too.

Made for current engines

Contrary to popular claims, most ordinary diesel engines can use biodiesel blends without modifications. For the few that might need a little help, the changes amount to little more than a regular tune-up.

Biodiesel is usually blended with conventional diesel for most applications, in concentrations up to 20%. B20 can be found at fueling stations across the country, but it’s also used extensively in private truck fleets, in locomotives and vessels, and in portable pumps and generators. Even the military reports “only positive feedback” on their biodiesel program.

Biodiesel is more lubricative than regular diesel. Even in blends as low as 1% or 2%, biodiesel can improve the lubricity of the ultra-low-sulfur diesel now required for use in the United States, which has poor lubricating properties. In higher blends, the benefits to an engine are even greater. This keeps your engines running more smoothly, more cleanly, and for a longer lifetime.

Cleaner air: the carbon cycle

Plants extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to grow, producing stems, leaves, and seeds. The seeds produce the oil we extract and convert into biodiesel. When the biodiesel is burned, it releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. There’s no increase in CO2 in the atmosphere when the biodiesel is burned, because the next crop of plants will use it again to grow.

Fossil fuels, by comparison, do not reclaim CO2 from the atmosphere, so all of the CO2 produced when petroleum fuel is burned actually adds to the amount of CO2 in the air.

Using biodiesel instead of regular diesel can therefore have a huge impact on the amount of CO2 released overall. A B20 blend, for example, reduces these CO2 emissions by 15.66%.

B100 emissions compared to petroleum diesel emissions by percentage:Emissions graph comparing petrol diesel with biodiesel

Why Biodiesel?

1. Biodiesel is a fuel made from a vast variety of vegetable or animal oils, such as soybean, sunflower or canola oil. It can also be made from waste cooking grease and non-food grade nuts or seeds.
2. Biodiesel is a substitute for diesel and will burn in ANY diesel engine without the need to convert the engine.
3. Biodiesel burns 78% cleaner than regular diesel according to the US EPA and is a sustainable resource.
4. If you make it yourself in an automated machine, you can save a lot of money.
5. Biodiesel has a higher lubricity rate making it better for the life of your engine than regular diesel.
6. The more biodiesel we use, the less dependent we are on foreign, petroleum based oil.
7. Biodiesel is biodegradable. (If the Exxon Valdez had been full of bio-oil, there never would have been a news story.)
8. Biodiesel will blend seamlessly with regular diesel at any ratio.
9. Biodiesel has other applications; it can be used as a heating oil substitute and is sometimes referred to as BioHeat.

Glycerin

Glycerin is a clear, colorless, odorless, viscous liquid with a sweet taste, derived from petrochemical and natural feedstock with the latter obtained from animal fat and vegetable oil products from grains. The market pays a premium for the kosher vegetable and USP natural glycerin. There are over 2,000 established uses for glycerin in the drug, food, beverage, chemicals and synthetic material industries. It is used in cosmetics, toiletries, sweeteners, solvents, softening agents, cough syrups, surface coatings, paints and many other products.

Crude Glycerin is an impure form of Glycerin and is primarily made as a by-product. Recently the reinvention of biodiesel has created much of the crude glycerin as it is a by-product from the manufacture of biodiesel. This supply has created market disruptions as it typically has many impurities in it including methanol, water and salts. A salable grade of crude glycerin is generally at least 80% glycerin with less than 1% methanol in it. Crude Glycerin that has lower levels of glycerin or higher levels of methanol often has little or no value.

As a chemical processor Biofuels Technology LLC with its innovative and proprietary technologies is able to find uses for various grades of crude glycerin. This is done in environmentally friendly method yielding economic benefits without the need for government subsidies.

GRT Soap

In 2012, company also started the GRT’s custom soap production line. The company uses the latest in technology from around the world to produce the highest quality soap bars. We have the ability to Contract Manufacture to your specifications and requirements. We have an extensive range of shapes, natural additives, fragrances and packaging options. Please refer to our Custom Manufacturing Page(coming soon) or contact ourselves directly.

Solar Panel

Every hour the sun beams onto Earth more than enough energy to satisfy global energy needs for an entire year. Solar energy is the technology used to harness the sun's energy and make it useable. Today, the technology produces less than one tenth of one percent of global energy demand.

Many people are familiar with so-called photovoltaic cells, or solar panels, found on things like spacecraft, rooftops, and handheld calculators. The cells are made of semiconductor materials like those found in computer chips. When sunlight hits the cells, it knocks electrons loose from their atoms. As the electrons flow through the cell, they generate electricity.

On a much larger scale, solar thermal power plants employ various techniques to concentrate the sun's energy as a heat source. The heat is then used to boil water to drive a steam turbine that generates electricity in much the same fashion as coal and nuclear power plants, supplying electricity for thousands of people.

In one technique, long troughs of U-shaped mirrors focus sunlight on a pipe of oil that runs through the middle. The hot oil then boils water for electricity generation. Another technique uses moveable mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a collector tower, where a receiver sits. Molten salt flowing through the receiver is heated to run a generator.

Other solar technologies are passive. For example, big windows placed on the sunny side of a building allow sunlight to heat-absorbent materials on the floor and walls. These surfaces then release the heat at night to keep the building warm. Similarly, absorbent plates on a roof can heat liquid in tubes that supply a house with hot water.

Solar energy is lauded as an inexhaustible fuel source that is pollution and often noise free. The technology is also versatile. For example, solar cells generate energy for far-out places like satellites in Earth orbit and cabins deep in the Rocky Mountains as easily as they can power downtown buildings and futuristic cars.

But solar energy doesn't work at night without a storage device such as a battery, and cloudy weather can make the technology unreliable during the day. Solar technologies are also very expensive and require a lot of land area to collect the sun's energy at rates useful to lots of people.

Despite the drawbacks, solar energy use has surged at about 20 percent a year over the past 15 years, thanks to rapidly falling prices and gains in efficiency. Japan, Germany, and the United States are major markets for solar cells. With tax incentives, solar electricity can often pay for itself in five to ten years.

Facts

Behavior and Fate of Vegetable Oils

In general, vegetable oils will behave similarly to mineral oils in the initial stage of a spill. To this extent, they will tend to float and spread on the surface of the water. However, vegetable oils tend to be even less soluble in water than mineral oils; they do not undergo dispersion in the water column nor will they evaporate to any extent.

Depending on their pour point (the temperature at which solidification commences) and the sea surface temperature, vegetable oils may form solid lumps when spilled that will float on the water surface. These discrete lumps have little tendency to coalesce as a surface slick. Over time and dependent on the prevailing conditions the product may accumulate sediment and may sink to the sea floor.

Vegetable oils are comprised primarily of triacylglycerols, or fatty acids, which, in their fresh state, may be broken down by marine bacteria. This decomposition contributes to the rancid odors typical of vegetable oil spills.

Vegetable oils will not readily form water-in-oil emulsions but may undergo a process of polymerization to form rubbery strings and clumps. These deposits are highly impermeable curtailing oxygen diffusion and replenishment, dramatically slowing the degradation process and forming an anoxic layer. By this process, vegetable oils, particularly with the incorporation of sediment, may give rise to the formation of very tough and highly persistent deposits.

Impact of Vegetable Oil Spills

Historically, vegetable oils have been considered relatively benign, non-toxic and therefore of limited concern to the environment. However, this generalization has been demonstrated to be incorrect. Previous experience has shown that both chronic and acute pollution incidents can lead to deleterious effects. This awareness has led to the reclassification of many vegetable oils as category Y (hazardous) products under Annex II of the MARPOL Convention with associated limitations on their carriage.

The primary environmental consequences of spills of vegetable oils are seen in relation to surface dwelling organisms where oil can lead to smothering and suffocation. Examples include oiling of bird plumage and animal fur. However, vegetable oils will also readily form solids which tend to have less smothering impact on surface organisms. A polymerized vegetable oil may form an impermeable barrier on the shoreline with potentially serious environmental and economic consequences.

One of the primary concerns with vegetable oils is the uncertainty and lack of knowledge of their degradation and weathering products. Ongoing research suggests for example that the toxicity of products such as canola oil and soybean oil actually increase significantly during aerobic biodegradation. The effects of such a process in a confined, shallow environment could be significant.