Yorkshire Water dealt with more than 80 sewer blockages caused by fat in Bradford Moor last year

Water management firm Yorkshire Water and Karmand Community Centre in Bradford are running a trial to collect cooking oil from Bradford residents to help prevent drain blockages and utilise the material for energy from waste.

The trial has seen 85 households receive 15-litre tubs, known as ‘fat vats’, for the collection of used cooking oil. It is hoped that residents will use these tubs to dispose of their used oil, rather than pouring it down the drain.

According to Yorkshire Water, residents in the Bradford Moor area of the city experienced more than 80 sewer blockage incidents in the past five years that were caused by solidified oils.

As such, the firm invested £2.3 million in ‘improving’ the area’s sewerage system last year.

Oil used to generate electricity

Under the trial, Karmand Community Centre will collect the full tubs of oil from people’s homes, and will then take them to a 1,000-litre waste collection unit provided by renewable energy company Living Fuels at the Karmand Community Centre on Barkerend Road.

The waste oil will then be sent to Living Fuels’s recovery facility in West Yorkshire where it will be subject to ‘natural gravitational settling’ before being filtered into a bioliquid called LF100. This can then be used at combined heat and power facilities owned by sister company Living Power to provide ‘carbon-neutral’ energy to the National Grid at times of ‘unexpected power demand’.

Living Fuels estimates that for every 1,000 litres of waste oil processed, enough electricity is produced to power a microwave continually for 125 days.

As such, Yorkshire Water says that the trial will ‘[power] Yorkshire homes with renewable energy and simultaneously solv[e] a long-standing drainage problem for local residents’.

Duncan Woodhead, Network Protection Technician at Yorkshire Water, said: “We've been working closely with local residents and are asking them to do their bit by not tipping their waste cooking fats, oils and greases down the sewer.

“A lot of people don’t realise the damage this can do because these liquids solidify when they get down to the sewers and that can cause blockages. We are all now looking forward to experiencing the benefits this new trial will bring."

Several councils, including West Sussex and Hampshire County Council already run similar, permanent schemes in their regions.

The problem of drain blockages caused by solidified oil, known as ‘fatbergs’, has been of increasing concern to water companies, with both Scottish Water and Thames Water taking action to reduce the practice of drain disposal.

Find out more about Yorkshire Water’s ‘fat vat’ trial on BBCiPlayer.