Nogger's Blog

20/12/10 -- Wandering around a small nearby village greengrocers/general store at the weekend my eye was caught by several large clear polythene sacks containing some greenish "pellets". The largest "pellet" I've ever seen in fact at around 50mm across.

The very helpful young man was delighted to assist. "We sell these bottles of extra virgin rapeseed oil, and that's the waste by-product," he informed us thrusting a brochure into my hand.

It made pretty impressive reading too. The "briquettes" are made in Yorkshire, from rapeseed grown in Yorkshire and only release the same CO2 back into the Yorkshire atmosphere that it recently sucked out of it.

They also have twice the energy of logs and burn twice as hot and for three times as long, they say. They produce no soot and virtually no ash, and what they do produce can be spread onto the garden as fertiliser, they add.

A 12.5kg bag is retailing at GBP8, similar to smokeless coal, that's GBP640/tonne. Not bad for a "waste" product, and more than three times better than selling it as an expeller in meal form into the feed trade.

I bought a sack and tried a few out last night, just out of interest, and they burned quite well. Does that mean I'm turning into Drax?

Incidentally, the cold pressed oil comes in at GBP4.95 for a 250ml bottle, that's around GBP21,500/tonne by my calculations.

Obviously there are some substantial costs involved in terms of bottling/pelleting and distribution not to mention scale, nevertheless the figures make interesting reading.