Greasezilla has brought its Knoxville facility fully online, marking what the company describes as the largest footprint of FOG receiving and recovery centers in the United States, and likely the world.
The site takes in fats, oils, and grease (FOG) pulled from grease traps and the waste stream, then recovers and recycles that material instead of sending it to landfills or incinerators. The valuable off-take is brown grease, also called advanced biofuel, which gets converted directly into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel.
The launch is already producing volume. Greasezilla says the first 50,000 gallons of brown grease advanced biofuel have departed Knoxville, headed to a refinery to be processed into clean renewable energy.
Brian Levine, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Greasezilla, framed the milestone in plain terms.
"We are proud to announce the full operational commencement of our Knoxville facility," Levine said. "Greasezilla boasts the largest footprint of FOG receiving and recovery centers in the United States, and likely in the world."
He added that the recovery model runs end to end. "In addition to receiving, recovering, and recycling FOG material, we take immense pride in the fact that the off-take from our system, known as brown grease and advanced biofuel, is directly converted into sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel."
The Knoxville launch fits a pattern Greasezilla has been building toward for over a year.
Earlier this month, we covered the company's bp-backed expansion getting underway in Virginia. That deal had bp financing the buildout of new FOG receiving stations across the country, with up to 40 sites planned and significant capital committed per location, all aimed at growing the supply of brown grease into the renewable diesel and SAF markets. Virginia was the first site to come online. Knoxville is the next chapter, now running at full scale.
For years, brown grease was the feedstock nobody wanted to handle. It was messy, hard to process, and usually treated as a disposal problem.
That story keeps changing. A facility this size, shipping refinery-bound biofuel by the tanker load on day one, is a sign that grease trap waste has moved from liability to legitimate energy feedstock. Knoxville is online. Watch for the next site.
