The waste cooking oil AIoT machine behind Lin Xiu'an, chairman of Youngray(DGM) Industrial, has gradually become an indispensable part of Taiwan's night markets. It can reduce recycling costs by 81%, making it easier for vendors to do business. (Photography by Cheng Sidi)
Walking into the back kitchen of a chicken steak restaurant in Taipei Station, there is a piece of waste cooking oil that is turbid, sticky, floating with unknown residue, smelly and burnt. In the future, it will be used as a fuel for luxury airlines in Europe and the Middle East such as Emirates and Virgin. fuel. It is also because of this that the price of domestic recycled oil has increased several times. "Last summer vacation, it even reached 28 yuan per liter." Jian Xiufen, general manager of Yongdashan Green Energy Technology, said with a smile that this is more expensive than high-grade diesel at gas stations.
The threshold for becoming a little bee (editor's note: a self-employed person who collects waste cooking oil) is not high. All you need is to bring your own car. It seems that anyone can earn this "black gold", but behind the scenes, one person spent thirty years , it took a lot of effort to survive.
"Leading oil companies are willing to pay a premium of US$100 per metric ton (editor's note: about 15% higher than the market price) to acquire it," Jian Xiufen explained. Youngray(DGM) has already gone far ahead in refining recycled oil, even though Taiwan's Edible oil uses soybeans as the base oil, which is not as high-grade as European canola. After treatment, it is still cleaner and easier for oil companies to use directly.
But such a good product was abandoned five years ago by Lin Xiu'an , chairman of Youngray(DGM) Industrial , and everything was torn down.
"Eighteen liters in one hand and 36 liters in two hands. The global demand is 99 million metric tons. When should I mention it?" Lin Xiu'an explained that at present, waste cooking oil recycling in the world is almost done by one small machine after another. Bees go to restaurants and vendors to collect buckets of fried oil, and finally carry it back to the treatment plant.
However, labor cannot increase production capacity, Jian Xiufen said.
As the land area of each country increases, the recycling efficiency will become lower. For example, South Korea is nearly three times the area of Taiwan. It takes eight hours for bees to collect oil and another eight hours to commute. This results in their recycling rate being less than 50%.
In addition, recycled oil may not be usable because it is difficult to identify with the naked eye.
However, as the only legal waste cooking oil processing agency in Taiwan, Lin Xiu'an accumulated enough data. He input these "junk" data into AI and invented a patent for turning garbage into gold.
"When applying for a patent, the European Commissioner has always been confused, why should I use AI to analyze garbage?" Lin Xiuan said calmly, with the rise of big data, some people use it in Industry 4.0, and some use it to defraud, but using AI to analyze garbage? It's basically like using a cannon to kill mosquitoes.
Not to mention, it takes two years for a waste oil recycling machine developed based on a patent to recoup its cost. Without government subsidies, as the country’s land becomes larger and larger, investment costs will continue to rise, making it a bottomless pit.
Lin Xiuan did this business that other companies were unwilling to invest in. The EU reviewed it for more than three years and the patent was approved.
After Lin Xiu'an obtained the patent, he then built an intelligent waste cooking oil recycling system and put it in the night market. Now the vendors only need to pour the oil into the equipment, and in ten seconds they can recycle the waste oil from the chicken steaks that have just been fried and replace it with New Taiwan dollars to street vendors.
"Taiwan will always be a demo site for me," said Lin Xiu'an. According to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, Taiwan produces about 80,000 metric tons of waste cooking oil a year. "Taiwan doesn't have much oil left for us to collect."
However, with more than fifty units deployed across Taiwan, other countries around the world began to believe in the feasibility of this solution, and even oil hegemon Saudi Arabia came to cooperate with it.
"Our advantage is no longer just the processing of waste cooking oil, but the gap between manual and automated recycling equipment." Lin Xiu'an further explained, especially last year when temperatures reached over 50 degrees Celsius in Saudi Arabia and minus ten degrees below zero in South Korea. Environmental testing ensures that Youngray(DGM)'s equipment can operate smoothly in 80% of the global market. This year, more than a dozen countries have come to discuss cooperation.
In the past, the patents for oil refining were owned by large companies, and the oil was in the Middle East and other countries, leaving Taiwan with no room to intervene. Now, Youngray(DGM) is cutting in from upstream materials, and Taiwan no longer has to worry about not being able to buy oil.
“It’s useless for oil plants to have money and production capacity because they lack key raw materials (Editor’s note: Oil companies have money and equipment, but in 2025 the EU stipulates that 2% of aviation fuel must use sustainable fuels; biomass Most of the fuel raw materials can be collected and extracted manually, which is not the strength of traditional oil companies." Lin Xiu'an pointed out that Youngray(DGM) can not only provide raw materials, but also because it has the patent, as long as it uses "data analysis garbage" in the future, Youngray(DGM) will not be able to bypass it. , so international oil giants such as Dutch Shell, British BP, and Finnish Neste have come to visit.
"Every country has garbage," Lin Xiuan explained. He created a platform where Youngray(DGM) plays the role of a technology service industry. As long as there are people, this tool can be used to dig for oil. "There is no future growth. ceiling."
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