Two schools, an FE college and more than 20 existing homes are among the Norfolk buildings to be heated with used cooking oil blended with kerosene.
As part of a year long experiment, 25 buildings in the Norfolk town of Reepham have been converted from the traditional heating oil kerosene to run on liquid biofuel.

The biofuel trial, is part of a partnership between the University of East Anglia's Low Carbon Innovation Centre, Norfolk County Council, the Oil Firing Technical Association (OFTEC) and the Industrial Commercial Energy Association (ICOM).

OFTEC said: 'Having a liquid biofuel that is interchangeable with domestic heating oil means that around 1.9 million households in the UK and Ireland will be able to use renewable technology to heat their homes and businesses'.

At Hackford Hall, one of the Reepham buildings, a 64kW condensing boiler was converted to run on biofuel by changing only a few parts including the oil filter and fuel pump.

OFTEC hopes that converting to biofuel will mean very few modifications to existing heating systems and therefore very low capital cost.

'OFTEC said: 'The best estimate is that bio-fuel adaptation of existing boilers will cost £300 - £2,000 (latter to include the tank), whereas a new bio-mass boiler costs £10,000 to be installed. If all UK and Ireland households currently with oil heating moved to a 30% blend of biofuel (used cooking oil) and 70% kerosene, there would be savings of two million tones of CO2 output per annum. Actual savings will depend on how many move to the new fuel and what the exact % blend is'.

The project end date is spring 2010 after which time analysis will be undertaken by researchers which will be released to the public. The outcome will be the specification of new bio-fuel blends with kerosene and gas-oil which will be provisional OFTEC standards, and these new fuels will be used by industry to develop new bio-fuel/ oil boilers and tanks.

OFTEC added: 'Combustion results from the field trials have been extremely encouraging to date, and there have been no issues with fuel storage'.