Press Release
Slick Idea
A Pembroke Businessman is a new Kind of oil man
By: Robin Respaut
Article Date: January, 2009
Source: New Hampshire Magazine
Vegetable oil isn't just for making french fries and chicken fingers anymore. You've probably heard about the unorthodox idea of pouring ould vegetable oil into a diesel automobile - a "French fry car" - but what ablut heating your home with fry oil?
That's the initiative behind American Energy Independence Company (AMENICO) of Pembroke. Less than a year after the company opened, it has sold more than 150 hot-water boilers that operate on waste vegetable oil.
"We are taking a waste product and turning it into a locally-useable fuel," says Tony Giunta, AMENICO president and CEO.
Unlike biodiesel, which undergoes an extensive refining process in production, waste vegetable oil requires only filtering and heating. Restaurant owners throughout the state are shipping their used fry oil up to Pittsfield, where AMENICO precesses it and sends it back as a usable heating fuel. The trick is that vegetable oil, while fully capable of heating a home, is not considered a fuel by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "It's a food product," says Giunta, who will dip bread into his oil and eat it when challenged.
For those not ready to switch their home hot water boilers to a veggie-oil-burning one, AMENICO recently released a blend fuel (made up of 5 percent fry oil, 95 percent petrol) that can be poured into any home furnace. AMENICO boilers are able to operate on regular heating fuel as well.
In a state striving to derive 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, only 9.3 percent of the energy consumed in New Hampshire in 2005 was from renewable sources, according to the NH Office of Energy and Planning. Giunta would like to help the state in its initiative to go green.
"We have a product for people who want a greener, carbon-neutral and environmentally friendly alternative," he says. The cost of a vegetable oil-burning AMENICO boiler won't break the bank, either. Customers can expect to see a return within one to three years.
- by Robin Respaut