Burning used oil: clean burn technology gaining popularity.

• Author: Freeman, Louise
• Position: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

art a time when heating oil costs e high, it makes sense for businesses with large heating bills to look into alternatives such as buying a heater or boiler that burns used oil. Although these units are commonly known as "waste oil heaters," dealers such as David and Nancy Shaw of Nenana Heating Services in Nenana prefer to use the more accurate term "used oil heaters."

Used oil can be bought for about two-thirds the price of new oil and some businesses even collect and burn used cooking oil from restaurants. Buying a used oil heater or boiler, however, makes the most sense for businesses that generate their own oil. According to EPA regulations, if you generate it, you can legally burn it on-site. Businesses will save both on heating costs and the cost of hauling away and disposing of the used oil. There is also the added benefit to the environment of recycling on-site and eliminating the chance of a spill while transporting the oil.

"It's turning a waste product into heat, just like you recycle newspapers," David Shaw said.

According to Shaw, they have sold heaters and boilers statewide, from Bethel to Ketchikan. Their customers include oil lubes, auto dealerships, construction companies, gold mines, such as Fort Knox, and other types of businesses that use large quantifies of crankcase oil, hydraulic fluid or automatic transmission fluid. On average, 500 gallons of used off per year is the minimum needed for an 18- to 36-month payback.

Nenana Heating Services is the only dealer in Alaska for Clean Burn technology. Clean Burn, founded in 1979 and based in Pennsylvania, has 80,000 heating units in use throughout the world, which annually burn 120 million gallons of used oil.

"Clean Burn is an exciting company, always researching and improving, and I'm proud to be part of them," says Shaw, who has been...