Mother of All Grease Fires(milk.com)
19 pointsby xk35 hours ago3 comments
  • amluto4 hours ago
    Another stupid part of this: used cooking grease has positive market value! Quite a few companies, even in expensive places like Palo Alto, will happily supply you, for free, with barrels and such to hold your grease, and they'll come empty them when they're full, and I think you can even often negotiate to get paid to give these companies your grease.

    It gets recycled into various non-tasty but still useful commodities.

    (The economics work out at restaurant scale but not necessarily at household scale. If you deep fry a lot at home, you might be responsible for transporting your own grease to someone who wants it.)

    • jandrese4 hours ago
      In the old days people would convert diesel trucks and cars to run on "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil. You could tell who did that because their cars always smelled like french fries.
      • ralferoo2 hours ago
        In the UK, all the used oil from MacDonalds is converted into biodiesel. I often walk past the plan where they do this and there's usually a lorry waiting to be allowed in through the gates.

        A few years back there was some eco-warrior protest outside trying to stop the lorries going in. Not really sure what they were trying to achieve with that as it seemed counter to their aims.

        • ajban hour ago
          Occasionally people in the UK get caught putting cooking oil in their (diesel ) cars, which is not illegal per se - but technically if you do it, you should pay fuel tax, which they generally don't. McDonald's are large enough that they will be, knowing that they would inevitably be caught.
    • fwipsy4 hours ago
      Was this also the case back in 1994?
  • skyberrys4 hours ago
    Love how many people were called over to provide expert advice on figuring out why diners couldn't enjoy the lovely outdoor seating without an adult on their nostrils.
  • quickthrowman2 hours ago
    Minor nitpick, transformers are sized in volt-amps, not watts. Apparent power is measured in volt-amps and actual power is measured in watts, the ratio between the two is the power factor.

    Plus, “one mega volt-amp” sounds way cooler than “a million watts” :)

    It may have been a 1MVA transformer with a 480V three-phase secondary, that’s the properly sized transformer, but the utility may have undersized it at 500kVA based on calculated load.

    That transformer was already oil-cooled, so adding a couple thousand extra gallons probably didn’t hurt the transformer too much lol.