What Works: Canton company uses secret process to recycle oil Posted By:       1 day ago CANTON -- It's a recipe as guarded as Coca-Cola, and in the fight for clean energy, its product is sweet in a totally different way. Canton now boats the country's first plant to recycle transformer oil. Hydrodec takes the dirty oil and is able to clean 99 percent of the liquid to be reused over and over again. The dirty oil is usually destroyed while new transformer oil is made from crude purchased overseas. "We're taking used transformer oil that's historically been burned as fuel when it no longer meets industry specifications, and we're taking that oil and we're recycling that through our refinery process and putting it back into service," said John Cowan, Hydrodec's North American President. The secret formula of cleaning the oil for reuse was developed in New Zealand, Cowan said, and it's closely guarded. The Canton plant, located next to a rail line to allow for the delivery of bulk shipments of dirty oil, can process about 25,000 gallons of dirty oil into clean Superfine Transformer Oil each day. The plant has delivered 35 green jobs to Canton with a promise of up to 25 more as the company expands. The larger impact may be in using the process to clean other oils that many consumers often use and discard. "It works with hydraulic oils," Cowan said. "It certainly could work with motor oils and other kinds of specialty oils that are not burned in some type of process." The company's Tuesday open house included a unique ribbon cutting of an oil tanker busting through a banner. Want to submit an idea for What Works? CLICK HERE © 2008 WKYC-TV

An oil rig bursts through a banner as Hydrodec opens its new plant in Canton.