Within the late nineteenth century, Rudolf Diesel designed the gas engine named after him. When he demonstrated his engine on the 1900 World’s Honest in Paris, it was powered by peanut oil to show that his invention may run on renewable, plant-based fuels somewhat than petroleum.
Patent for Diesel’s inner combustion engine (📷: Google Patents)
Diesel envisioned his engine as a device for farmers who may develop their very own gas, making them much less depending on imported fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the diesel engine would change into intently tied to petroleum diesel, which was cheaper and extra plentiful on the time.
World transportation emissions stay one of many hardest local weather challenges. In response to the Worldwide Power Company, transport contributes roughly 24% of world CO₂ emissions, largely from diesel and gasoline engines. Regardless of advances in electrification, heavy transport, delivery, and agriculture nonetheless rely closely on fossil fuels.
Biodiesel, derived from renewable oils like waste cooking oil or vegetable oil, gives a practical different. It burns cleaner and emits considerably much less carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter. It gives a technique to decarbonize current fleets with out scrapping the engines.
Biodiesel produced from used cooking oil or waste grease leads to an 86% discount in greenhouse gases in comparison with petroleum diesel, based on the USA Environmental Company. As an alternative of treating used cooking oil as waste, it may be collected, refined, and reused as a clear vitality supply.
Tagaddod is a renewable vitality startup based mostly in Egypt. Based in 2013, it originated as a undertaking on the German College in Cairo, the place the three co-founders collaborated to develop waste administration options for vegetable oil. The corporate operates throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe, accumulating and aggregating renewable cooking oils, acid oils, waste oils, and fat from households and companies.
The phrase “tagaddod” is Arabic for renewal, underlying the corporate’s said mission “to leverage knowledge, know-how, and logistics to assist worldwide vitality safety and waste elimination.”
Solely 10% of the five hundred,000 tons of cooking oil waste Egypt produces yearly is correctly collected and recycled. Tagaddod captures a few of the waste and exports it as biodiesel feedstock for powering autos and industries.
Whereas it was based as a biodiesel plant, the corporate now focuses on accumulating, aggregating, and transporting used cooking oil and renewable feedstock to biodiesel and hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) producers. In 2024, it reached over 450,000 households and 5,000 companies by way of its Inexperienced Pan service. Not too long ago, it raised $26.3 million in Collection A funding to develop its operations throughout the Center East and Africa, marking one of many largest cleantech investments within the area this 12 months.
The renewable feedstock trade competes with the meals and chemical manufacturing industries, which impacts the provision and pricing of biofuels. Tagaddod sidesteps the meals vs. gas debate by accumulating used cooking oil that might be in any other case poured into landfills and waterways.
Tagaddod’s government staff
It helps recycling efforts whereas offering further income for eating places, households, and aggregators. Its digital assortment system, notably the Inexperienced Pan app, makes Taggadod one of many largest waste-to-energy digital ecosystems within the Center East.
Throughout the globe, different initiatives are embracing the same philosophy of turning waste into renewable vitality. BioLite Africa in Kenya converts biomass waste into clear vitality merchandise like stoves and off-grid energy techniques, and Finnish firm Neste leads in large-scale biodiesel manufacturing from used cooking oil and animal fat.
