A New Use For McDonald's Used Cooking Oil: 3D Printing (cnn.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Professor Andre Simpson had a problem. The University of Toronto's Scarborough campus was paying through the nose for a crucial material for its 3D printer. Few would have guessed McDonald's would come to the rescue. Simpson is director of the school's Environmental NMR Center dedicated to environmental research. Central to this research is an analytical tool called the NMR spectrometer. NMR stands for nuclear magnetic resonance and is technically similar to how an MRI works for medical diagnostics. Simpson had bought a 3D printer for the lab in 2017. He hoped to use it to build custom parts that kept organisms alive inside of the NMR spectrometer for his research. But the commercial resin he needed for high-quality light projection 3D printing (where light is used to form a solid) of those parts was expensive.
The dominant material for light projection printing is liquid plastic, which can cost upward of $500 a liter, according to Simpson. Simpson closely analyzed the resin and spotted a connection. The molecules making up the commercial plastic resin were similar to fats found in ordinary cooking oil. What came next was the hardest part of the two-year experiment for Simpson and his team of 10 students -- getting a large sample batch of used cooking oil. "We reached out to all of the fast-food restaurants around us. They all said no," said Simpson. Except for McDonald's. After filtering out chunks of food particles and experimenting with the oil for several months, the team was able to successfully print a high-quality butterfly with details as minute as 100 micrometers in size.
"The experiment yielded a commercially viable resin that Simpson estimates could be sourced as cheaply as 30 cents a liter of waste oil," reports CNN. Another bonus: it is biodegradable.
Simpson and his team published their research in December 2019 in industry publication ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
The dominant material for light projection printing is liquid plastic, which can cost upward of $500 a liter, according to Simpson. Simpson closely analyzed the resin and spotted a connection. The molecules making up the commercial plastic resin were similar to fats found in ordinary cooking oil. What came next was the hardest part of the two-year experiment for Simpson and his team of 10 students -- getting a large sample batch of used cooking oil. "We reached out to all of the fast-food restaurants around us. They all said no," said Simpson. Except for McDonald's. After filtering out chunks of food particles and experimenting with the oil for several months, the team was able to successfully print a high-quality butterfly with details as minute as 100 micrometers in size.
"The experiment yielded a commercially viable resin that Simpson estimates could be sourced as cheaply as 30 cents a liter of waste oil," reports CNN. Another bonus: it is biodegradable.
Simpson and his team published their research in December 2019 in industry publication ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
Re: (Score:2)
Please just stop posting.
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't butthurt. It's a response to something that is (overall) quite bad for Slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
So what else do you propose that people do?
Re:You gave chemists oil and got plastic (Score:5, Interesting)
The real takeaway here is that it's a liquid, UV-curable resin.
Zhang et al. disclosed a novel one step synthesis of acrylated soybean oil, which greatly reduces the cost and time of making these types of materials.13, 14 By incorporating vanillin dimethacrylates into the formula, Lebedevaite et al. synthesized a photoinitiator free 3D printing resin.15
[...]
In the present study, used cooking oil was obtained directly from a McDonald’s restaurant at the time of day it would normally be disposed of. A modified version of Zhang’s approach is applied here to perform the acrylation of WCO.14 After confirming the successful acrylation of the WCO, the product was formulated into a 3D printing resin and printed by a commercial 3D printer.
Re: (Score:1)
The real takeaway here is that it's a liquid, UV-curable resin.
You mean like all existing UV-curable resins used in DLP/SLA 3D printing? Most of which are already manufactured from soybean oil?
Re: You gave chemists oil and got plastic (Score:5, Interesting)
So then the real questions here are:
1. What's the total cost per liter after they modified the oil.
2. If the total cost is anywhere near the quoted "30 cents per liter" then why the hell do existing resins cost $500+?
If these guys have actually found a way to turn soybean oil into cheap resin, then the whole "used oil" thing is a bit of a red herring. I can buy clean soybean oil from amazon for about $8 a liter. Buying it in bulk from an industrial supplier would probably cut that in half, easy. So, ok, 30 cents is a lot less than $4, but it's insignificant when compared to the $500 cost of the resin they were using previously ....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: You gave chemists oil and got plastic (Score:1)
Ffs ... pay attention ... a $4 saving on a product which costs $500 isn't even worth mentioning.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would I pay $4 for something I can get for 30c?
What was that? The $4 version requires me to deforest part of the Amazon to grow more soy? Oh, well, sign me right fucking up.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, who's deforesting the Amazon to grow soy? The United States has a glut of soybeans that have only recently started to flow back to China thanks to reductions/suspensions in tariffs.
Re: (Score:3)
Soy cultivation is a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon basin.
-- https://globalforestatlas.yale... [yale.edu]
There have been recent efforts to curb the extent of deforestation but it's certainly been a major historical factor.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, this is not a recent development. One would think the current (or at least recent) soy oversupply would have reduced demand for soy on the open market.
Re: (Score:2)
Recent as in for a decade up until 2016.
Sorry, I'm old enough for that to be recent.
Re: (Score:2)
Changes in Ag move fast. Crop cycles and commodity prices/availability aren't measured in decades.
Easiest way for the US to solve deforestation in the Amazon would be to dump cheap soy on the South American market.
Re: (Score:2)
Brazil? Because:
The United States has a glut of soybeans that have only recently started to flow back to China thanks to reductions/suspensions in tariffs.
Re: (Score:2)
Glut means, we we have too many. There's less reason to grow more soy in Brasil if the United States if flooding the market with soy that the Chinese until recently couldn't/wouldn't buy due to tariffs.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about the others, but I read the whole thread again and all I understand is that it's not compatible with my dot-matrix printer.
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on location, they may actually be paid for it. Where I used to work, the grease traps and fryers got emptied into a special dumpster out back. Every once in a while, a tanker truck would come by to pump out the dumpster's contents and haul it away. They'd clean it up and sell it on to cosmetics manufacturer
Re: (Score:2)
Re: You gave chemists oil and got plastic (Score:5, Informative)
A key part is that they developed a novel single step synthesis to replace a complex multi-step process used currently. That drops the price a lot.
The recycled cooking oil is mostly a red herring, but it does demonstrate that their process is not overly harmed by less than pure feedstock. New or used, the oil is going to be cheaper if it doesn't have to be ultra pure.
Next up, their resin is biodegradable. That can be a very good thing if you're in a design - print - test cycle. All the test prints can be easily disposed of.
this [utoronto.ca] is a much better write-up.
Re: You gave chemists oil and got plastic (Score:2)
That's about what I figured. Thanks for filling in the details!
Re: (Score:2)
So then the real questions here are:
1. What's the total cost per liter after they modified the oil. 2. If the total cost is anywhere near the quoted "30 cents per liter" then why the hell do existing resins cost $500+?
If these guys have actually found a way to turn soybean oil into cheap resin, then the whole "used oil" thing is a bit of a red herring. I can buy clean soybean oil from amazon for about $8 a liter. Buying it in bulk from an industrial supplier would probably cut that in half, easy. So, ok, 30 cents is a lot less than $4, but it's insignificant when compared to the $500 cost of the resin they were using previously ....
No, not a red herring. This research can pave the way to opening up new ways of recycling used cooking oil. It opens new source of businesses for restaurants willing to sell it (or companies willing to take it and create 3D resin or finished products with it.)
Imagine if this also open the door to create resins out of automobile used oil.
Not a red herring at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Not use about the used automobile oil. That usually contains lots of metal, which you wouldn't be likely to find in McDonald's cooking oil. At least I don't think so.
(OK, and lots of other petrochemical fragments that weren't in the cooking oil. But the metal was obvious, and metals are frequently poison to catalysts.)
bubububut they had to get used oil (Score:2)
as if it was that hard to go to a chinese restaurant and paying them 10 bucks to get some.
seriously why would whoever wrote that think it was important how they got the oil or that in reality it would be hard to get something you can create for 2 dollars ? I mean they do realize they can actually just buy oil and fry some fries for a few bucks and boom they don't need to be begging from a mcdonald which has already a system for oil recycling and therefore doesn't want to give free fuel away to bums.
smaller
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Can they print french fries? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
They will even smell right...
Guy 1: So how’d the part come out??
Guy 2: Fried
Guy 1: Sounds awesome!
Re: (Score:3)
Technically, yes.
The oil has carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, but mostly somewhere around C18. Fries are mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen [researchgate.net], but they're most C6, so you need to crack the oils. Experiment suggests [react-ite.eu] the yields of C6 are pretty lousy with cheap catalysts.
But, yes. You could, at great expense and loss.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds perfect for a government-backed program.
They said no (Score:4, Informative)
The reason they all said "no" is because the waste oil is already recycled and sold or used. Plus used cooking oil is like $1 per liter. Once it has been recycled it is even more valuable.
Yea, ummm, why...??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why did they need to have USED cooking oil?
Last time I saw, the grocery store sold brand-new oil for a lot less than $500 a liter.
And if you go to restaurant supply places, you can get it in 5-gallon carboys for cheaper than the grocery store prices?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought the hippies running their 240Ds on this stuff just did that because they could get it for free/cheap.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct, but it's gotten a lot harder to get it for free since corporations realized they could make a buck on it.
Some people also run waste motor oil, mixed with regular unleaded gasoline. But guess what? Motor oil is being recycled now too. It used to just be burned for energy, but now they're re-refining it and turning it back into motor oil. It costs about half as much as new motor oil. It's fine for anyone doing frequent changes.
Re: (Score:2)
Why did they need to have USED cooking oil?
Last time I saw, the grocery store sold brand-new oil for a lot less than $500 a liter.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Buying new oil doesn't support the former but does the second option. Why develop something from the onset that can increase consumption instead of just jumping straight to demonstrating reuse viability.
Re: (Score:2)
And if you go to restaurant supply places, you can get it in 5-gallon carboys for cheaper than the grocery store prices?
There's a cheaper way to obtain your lipids. [youtube.com]
fat (Score:1)
I 3D printed a big fat gut with french fries, from the inside out even.
Waste? (Score:3)
Re:Waste? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
When biodiesel started hitting the news hard a few years ago, that's when they started getting paid for their used oil. At first , they just let them take it for free, but it got more and more popular....
Re: (Score:2)
People already pay for used cooking oil.
Re: (Score:2)
great Diesel (Score:2)
Re:great Diesel (Score:4, Interesting)
it's a great Diesel oil, as well as 3d printing material. What else we could do with it?
It's a not so great diesel oil, it will oxidize over time creating more precipitates than regular diesel, to avoid this you have to be cycling (consuming and refilling) the fuel more constantly, otherwise these precipitates will end up clogging the fuel delivery system, be it a jammed line, pump or filter, it also jellies up at higher temperatures, making their use in colder places unreliable.
Other than those small issues, it's good.
Re: (Score:2)
Amazed (Score:5, Funny)
"The molecules making up the commercial plastic resin were similar to fats found in ordinary cooking oil. "
Wait, what? Did I read that correctly? After a detailed and thorough analysis they figured out that oil is a hydrocarbon?
Re: Amazed (Score:1)
Hydrocarbons are a very large group of molecules, and they are not all similar.
Is the oil the same up there? (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
And if it wasn't a pleasant atmosphere, we are deeply sorry.
Signed,
Canadians.
Nothing new under the bun (Score:2)
After filtering out chunks of food particles and experimenting with the oil for several months, the team was able to successfully print a high-quality butterfly with details as minute as 100 micrometers in size.
Oh come on. McDonald's fats have been 3D printing gigantic 3D objects with cellular-sized resolution for decades!
Oil,oil, everywhere (Score:1)
Its not surprising the oil was hard to get as a lot of restaurants actually lease the oil.
Its often filtered and reused.
Does their plastic smells like fries?
Why target McDonalds (Score:2)
Nearly every restaurant and many households have deep fat fryers.
Probably it is because many peoples first job was at McDonalds and that is their first experience with the cooking method.
But nearly every restaurant chain has deep fryers, From Fast Food Joins to High End restaurants.
Oddly enough it isn't as unhealthy as it seems if you do it right. Being that it is fast cook the outside of the food get cooked so fast that it doesn't have time to absorb the oil. That is why at the end of the day Restaurants
In the summary (Score:2)
Asking people to donate used household oil may not have given sufficient quantities for the project.
Re:Why target McDonalds (Score:2)
Because McDonald's is known world-wide, their research can be published anywhere.