SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A Yellowknife man has found a new purpose for restaurant grease.

Long after the vegetable oil has fried french fries and fish batter, Dan Gillis transforms it into bio-diesel which could be used, he said, in furnaces and to run bio-diesel engines.

The project started three months ago when he wanted to transform enough vegetable oil to run his diesel truck and furnace. But Ecology North suggested he do it on a bigger scale and report back to them. In a garage in the Kam Lake industrial park, Gillis has buckets of used vegetable oil ready to be transformed into fuel, along with garbage cans and metal drums filled with oil in various stages of production.

He said he collects used vegetable oil from Surly Bob's, Bruno's Pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Black Knight Pub, Winks and After 8.

As restaurants have to pay a fee to discard that oil at the dump, they give it to him for free.

"The (disposal) fee is not a really big deal for them but they're really happy to have it used for something rather than thrown away because it is a valuable resource," he said.

The transformation process involves adding sodium hydroxide and methanol to separate the glycerin from the solution. Gillis then cleans the bio-diesel by mixing it with water, shaking it, and letting it settle before removing the water.

The resulting bio-diesel can be used in diesel vehicle engines and as heating fuel in furnaces and boilers, he said.

He said the bio-diesel thickens, however, when temperatures drop below -15 C. That's why he mixes it with kerosene and a cetane boost before putting it into his car.

"I have lots of interested people who have expressed a desire to buy it, even to invest in the process if investment is called for," said Gillis. "I've tested it in my diesel car and it worked really, really well."

He has yet to try it on his furnace.

Hugh Wetmore, a salesman with Premier Northern Ltd., a Yellowknife company that specializes in oil heating equipment and supply, was skeptical when told of Gillis' experiment.

He worried the vegetable oil-based product would thicken up like shortening inside outdoor fuel tanks when it gets cold.

"That's why we have specifically thin diesel fuel up here. It's not diesel fuel. It's an Arctic diesel - it's designed specifically for the North," he said.

"It is thinner than the regular diesel because the regular diesel that they use in the furnaces down in the East Coast ... it would be so thick it would be like Jell-O. You could slice it with a knife. And bio-diesel will do the same thing if it's stored outdoors."

Gillis added at this point, he's not ready to sell it as he is still experimenting.

As for the glycerin, a by-product of the process, Gillis said he plans to use it, possibly for soap, face cream or hand lotion.