Press Release 2011
Maho Bay St John Kiln Powered By Cooking Oil The kiln was used to fire pottery crafted during the ongoing art workshops offered at the resort. Press Release 2011
St John, USVI (October 6, 2011) - Maho Bay's restaurant and Concordia Caf? do not fry that many items, but when they do, menu items such as our infamous Chicken/Eggplant Parmesans and Fish and Chips use fresh cooking oil.
Using fresh cooking oil is extremely important for taste because re-used cooking oils break down and create unpleasant flavors over time. The dilemma on a small island like St. John is what to do with the waste cooking oils.
The island goes through periods where there is nowhere to dispose of waste cooking oil. Landfills will stop accepting them at times and the restaurants are left with stockpiles and no way to appropriately dispose of them.
The answer was found in Maho's own back yard. In 2003, Maho Bay Camps installed a low-energy kiln that used pallet wood as a fuel source. Pallet wood that usually ended up in the landfill. The kiln was used to fire pottery crafted during the ongoing art workshops offered at the resort.
With much trial and error, a gravity fed burners were contrived that mist the waste oil for combustion in the kiln. It worked.
The first firing was last month. Using 60 gallons of waste cooking oil, it fired quickly - reaching 2,300 degree Fahrenheit for eight hours. The results were spectacular.
This was win-win, feel-good situation for Maho Bay Camps.
Safely dispose of a hazardous waste material and produce something of value by doing so.
Maho Bay's next in-house project to is to try and burn waste cooking oil in their glass blowing ovens.
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