Bi-Oleum: Ecological remediation of household Used Cooking Oil (UCO)

  • Magali Mendez

94% of European households throw UCO down the sink generating catastrophic environmental impact. The most disruptive being the effect on aquatic ecosystems and fat-berg sewer blockages. Bi-Oleum is an affordable easy-to-use household kit that attempts to solve this issue. It incorporates a non-pathogenic bacterial strain to bioremediate and remove domestic UCO, producing a clean output. This project challenges current human behaviours by incorporating a living, unharmful bacteria into our daily lives to achieve a sustainable biodesigned solution.

Awards
• 2° runner-up of the Clean Tech Challenge 11th edition
• Selected by The Sustainable Angle to showcase Bi-Oleum at the 10th Future Fabrics Expo
• Shortlisted for The Mills Fabrica innovation Award 2022
• Featured project at Dutch Design Week by Green Product Award 2022
• Showcased at the Greener Manufacturing Show 2022
Experimentation: Bacterial Growth:
After months experimenting with a specific bacterial strain I was able to confirm that it was growing using only UCO as source of energy to live