An Oil for Utilities. It’s Superfine!

Superfine.

No, it’s not a lost album classic from the late Rick James. It’s the brand name of a recycled oil for transformers produced by England’s Hydrodec.

The company signed a deal with Consolidated Edison, New York’s mega-utility, this week under which ConEd will deliver 450,00 gallons of spent transformer fuel to Hydrodec a year. In turn, Hydrodec will turn the spent oil into Superfine (I just can’t get enough of that name) and then sell it to transformer manufacturers.

Recycling essentially will obviate the need to dig up new fossil fuels. It should also cut down on pollution. Now, used transformer oil is sold to the secondary market. These new customers take it and burn it. Old transformer oil is not the cleanest fuel in the world. It contains Polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin. You might as well burn plastic to keep warm.

“We’re seeing strong demand for our Superfine oil,â€? said John Cowan, President of Hydrodec North America in a prepared statement.

Other companies looking at getting oil or other valuables from industrial garbage: Lehigh Technologies (recycling old tires), Hewlett-Packard and Electronic Recyclers (recycling old PCs) and 212 Resources (oil and water from waste streams from refineries).