Located in Philadelphia, initially it seemed logical to utilize used restaurant fryer oil. The project was named Philadelphia Fry-o-Diesel (PFOD). However, upon further investigation, it became clear that fryer grease was not actually a waste product. In fact, there was already a lucrative industry collecting this fryer grease, cleaning it up, and then selling it for secondary uses, such as animal feed additive and biodiesel production. And as the biodiesel market grew, the price for this material would only rise. So PFOD began looking at other urban materials that could be used for biodiesel production and were true waste products.

The answer was trap grease, which is grease from commercial kitchens that has gone down the drain and been collected in a grease trap. Of course, Philadelphia Trap-o-Diesel just didn’t have the same ring as Fry-o-Diesel, so we didn’t bother to change our name. Grease from the traps is pumped out regularly and then disposed of at wastewater treatment plants. It’s gross, it smells terrible, everyone along the disposal chain pays to get rid of it, and it contains lipid material that could be made into biodiesel – just what PFOD was looking for.

However, there were many reasons why this undesirable material had not been commercialized for biodiesel production. Besides its offensive odor and appearance, it was also full of water and virtually any contaminant that had gone down the drain. Also, as the grease sat in the sewers it started to decompose, making its chemical composition very different from fryer grease and plant oils. In fact, while there were many commercial technologies for converting fryer grease and plant oils into biodiesel, none existed for transforming trap grease into biodiesel. PFOD assembled a team that included biodiesel experts in the country to design such a process and established a collaboration with the US Department of Agriculture’s Eastern Regional Research Center. In mid-2004, PFOD was awarded an Energy Harvest Grant from the PA Department of Environmental Protection and built a pilot plant in north Philadelphia to demonstrate and optimize the process of converting trap grease to biodiesel.

The innovative process PFOD developed could transform this low-grade material into a high-quality biodiesel, in spite of trap grease’s many undesirable qualities. In fact, PFOD’s process didn’t just work on trap grease, it worked on all sorts of other degraded greases known as "brown grease." And it also worked on the nicer greases and oils, like fryer oil ("yellow grease"), rendered animal fats, and plant oils.

It became clear that there was a greater value in applying this technology across the country rather than the original idea of producing biodiesel only to supply The Energy Cooperative. Instead, PFOD’s invention could open the doorway to a vast array of biodiesel feedstocks that were previously only considered a waste or pollutant. In order to commercialize this technology, PFOD became an independent company rather than a subsidiary of The Energy Cooperative. PFOD received a follow-on grant from the PA Department of Environmental Protection for commercialization. The first patent was filed and commercialization efforts began. The company's name was changed to BlackGold Biofuels in January of 2009. BlackGold now has several scales of commercial plant design. BlackGold continues to demonstrate its technology at its pilot plant and is now licensing its technology.