Burning Bio News

Frying oil from Illinois State University (Normal, IL) Campus Dining Services is being converted into fuel for campus fleet vehicles. The project started in 2007. Now, a couple of times a week, a team of undergraduate science students turn the waste oil into a 50-gallon batch of biodiesel. Environmental health majors collaborate on the project with the agriculture department, dining services and facilities management.

At a recent City Council Meeting in Carthage, MO, the reopening of an ‘odorless’ Renewable Environmental Solutions (RES) plant was discussed. Resident Tim Jeffries said he doesn’t have any faith that Renewable Environmental Solutions will follow through on promises to operate odor-free if and when it reopens. – mj: This facility is one where the first commercial-scale conversion technology projects that leading the curve in the Midwest. It was mired down with enormous start-up challenges, the largest of which was odor. If/when they are able to get the bugs worked out it will be an amazing technology.

The parent company of the AB Foods-Washington Beef processing plant in Toppenish, WA, has won $2 million in grants and loans to create a biofuels company that will transform waste into diesel. AB Bioenergy will use the money to build a biofuels facility later this year in a yet-to-be determined Central Washington location. After it ramps up in the spring of 2011, the plant is expected to create 16 new jobs.

A white roof reflects heat and cools a building; a dark one absorbs it. But until now there hasn’t been a material that could do both. But a new ’smart’ roof coating - rather amazingly, made from waste cooking oil from fast food restaurants - can ‘read’ a thermometer and switch between roles. The coating is produced by processing waste cooking oil into a liquid polymer that hardens into a plastic after application. Tests on the new coated asphalt shingles showed that they could reduce roof temperatures by up to 80 percent in warm weather - and warm it by the same amount when the weather is cold.

Affordable Bio Feedstock, Inc. has developed a brown grease waste recycling plant which turns grease into biofuels in Kissimmee, Florida. In addition to creating biofuels, the company also converts food solids into fertilizer or animal feedstock. The company has developed a Thermal Depolymerization technology, which allows them to separate its contents (oil, organic solids and water) into three commercially marketable products: brown grease, nutrient rich organic solids and nutrient rich water. The plant will process 50,000 gallons of grease trap waste per day.

Hero BX, Shiremanstown, PA, recently received a fresh financial injection for biodiesel expansion. Formerly called Lake Erie Biofuels, the company won a $1.64 million grant to expand production by 10 million gallons to 55 million gallons per year. Hero BX is working with Penn State Extension agronomists and seed industry experts such as Ernst Seeds of Meadville, PA, to pioneer use of camelina and possibly canola as a biofuel feedstock.

The North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance has opened a new online commodity-trading Web site for organic materials to help expand the development of the biomass economy. The NC Biomass Trader will help connect those getting rid of such waste products such as waste vegetable oil, restaurant grease, wood waste, manures, food waste, forest products and byproducts and agricultural products and byproducts. The Web site at www.ncbiomasstrader.com

Global Alternative Fuels (GAF) will expand its biodiesel plant in El Paso, Texas, US, from 5 to 20 million gallons a year. The expansion also includes installing equipment to process grease thrown out by restaurants without having to blend the grease with refined soyabean oil. This and the higher processing capacity reduces production costs significantly.

BioFuelBox Inc. has installed the first of a new biodiesel technology converting waste vegetable oil at a potato processing facility into biodiesel fuel at the potato plant in American Falls, ID. The BioFuelBox is a 1 million gallon modular unit (complete system). This BioFuelBoxthat began operation in August.

The R-3 Energy LLC in Cottonwood Falls, KS, a 1.4 million gallon per year biodiesel plant is up and running. R-3 manufactures their biodiesel fuel out of chicken fat.

Irving, Texas-based Darling International Inc. has taken the initial steps to form a joint venture with a subsidiary of Valero Energy Corp. to build a facility capable of producing more than 10,000 barrels per day, or 135 million gallons per year, of renewable diesel on a site adjacent to Valero’s St. Charles refinery near Norco, LA. The proposed facility would principally convert waste grease — primarily animal fats and used cooking oil supplied by Darling — and potentially other feedstocks that become economically and commercially viable into renewable diesel.

U.S. Freedom Bio Fuels, LLC, manufacturer of Biodiesel production equipment for the commercial end user, has developed a processor for converting animal fat to fuel. Their BD65AF processor will produce 200 gallons of fuel every 8 hours, without acid pre-treatment. For every 10 pounds of rendered fat, the U.S. Freedom Bio Fuels model BD65AF will produce 1 gallon of finished fuel, ready to power everything from diesel generators, diesel cars and trucks, to oil fired furnaces. The BD65AF will produce fuel in 40 and 65 gallon batches, with 2 hours required per batch, and 15 minutes of labor.

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has opened a community-based biodiesel facility in Knoxville, TN. Full production, double-shift capacity for the medium-scale mobile unit will approach 380,000 gallons of biodiesel per year. SACE will collect waste fryer oil from participating restaurants and the new facility will convert the waste oil into ASTM spec. biodiesel. Currently 30 restaurants and food service establishments are participating in the Knoxville area.

Crimson Renewable Energy, Bakersfield, CA, has open its 30 million gallon per year biodiesel production facility. Crimson will primarily use yellow grease as well as animal fats, mostly beef tallow or pork fat for feedstocks. The ability to use a flexible source of feedstocks is one way of avoiding the extreme price movements the US has experienced in the last two years.

Panama City, FL, has established used cooking oil drop points. People can pick up containers at eight area locations (most of which are gas stations), fill them up with used plant based cooking oils and return them to the neon green recycling stations. The city then collects the oil, converts it to biodiesel and uses it in city vehicles. The City mixes their homemade biodiesel with eight parts diesel (2 parts biodiesel) to provide B20 for the City fleet.

The soon-to-market Vegawatt system allows operators to turn their used vegetable oil into energy for electricity and hot water. Over the past four years Owl Power has been diligently working on Vegawatt, a refrigerator-sized cogeneration system that would allow food establishments to reduce their needs for electricity and natural gas supplied from utility companies. Instead the companies would use their used vegetable oil to create power and hot water.

Western Biofuels Inc. released the results of an independent validation test and announced plans to build a 1.4 MMgy demonstration plant for a new biofuel process. The process combines a chemical reaction using nitrogen compounds and distillation to create a unique biofuel from fats and oils that is not a methyl ester, that is being called a High Energy BioFuel (HEBF). Regardless of feedstock, the process yields about 5 percent of a light, naptha-like fraction, about 10 percent of a heavy bio-bunker fuel and the rest the biomass-based diesel fraction. — mj: This sounds interesting, and it may even be the solution of tomorrow, but it is much more difficult to commercialize a technology for which the output is not commercially defined (already in use).

Bio-Blend Fuels, Manitowoc, WI, uses bacon fat to produce biodiesel. They also distribute it through their own blending station. According to the article, the Kaderabeks’ blend of 20 percent biodiesel-80 percent regular diesel sold for $2.17 Monday while “B99″ (almost all fuel from the pig fat) was $1.99.

A joint venture by ConocoPhillips and Tyson that would have the fuel giant turning the meat giant’s animal fat waste into biodiesel has folded because of the halving of a key federal tax credit. Tyson Foods said the bailout bill approved by Congress and signed by President Bush in late 2008 reduced the tax credit for renewable diesel “co-processing” from $1 per gallon to $0.50 per gallon. The refinery would have had a production capacity of 175 million gallons of biodiesel a year.

Dynamic Fuels LLC (a partnership between Tyson Foods and Syntroleum Corp) are on schedule to complete their 75 million gallon biodiesel refinery in Geismar, Louisiana next year. The facility will turn chicken fat, beef tallow, pork lard and other greases, into high-quality biodiesel and jet fuel by next year. — mj: This is like a tale of two chicken fat-to-fuel projects. The large scale oil refinery project can’t make it work, and the smaller one can? Maybe the LA plant fits into a different tax credit category? It might have something to do with a commitment to make it work? It is hard to believe that even with low oil prices the opportunity cost of using chicken fat to displace crude oil can be too high? Regardless of the details, it cost too much for ConocoPhillips and Tyson to make work in Texas.