On Tuesday evening, Emporia’s newest industrial prospect explained how it can turn 100 pounds of soybean oil into 100 pounds of fuel.
The company, Renewable Energy Group, plans to start building a $65 million biodiesel plant in Emporia this summer. Once finished, it will be capable of producing 60 million gallons of fuel a year.
The plant will run around the clock, piping soybean oil directly from the Bunge North America plant.
“Truthfully, when we started this, we talked about trying to locate on the Bunge facility, but it didn’t work out for a lot of reasons,” project engineer Joe Furco told an audience at Flint Hills Technical College. “Try taking a footprint where we need 20 to 30 acres and fitting it on that little corner of Bunge, and you can see the potential for a lot of hate and discontent.”
Biodiesel, like other alternative fuels, has gained a lot of attention as oil prices have gone up and stayed up. In 1999, only half a million gallons was sold in the U.S. By 2005, according to the National Biodiesel Board, that had grown to 75 million gallons.
REG’s business development manager Scott Wernimont said he couldn’t project where the market would go in 10 years. But he added that government experts were predicting long-term oil prices to be $69 a barrel.
“If we have crude oil at that level, biodiesel is in very good shape,” he said.
What is this stuff?
Biodiesel fuel can be processed from any fat or oil, including soybean oil, corn oil and palm oil. By mixing 100 pounds of material with 10 pounds of methanol and a catalyst, a plant can make 100 pounds of biodiesel fuel and 10 pounds of glycerine, a sugar. The fuel can be used by itself or blended with petroleum.
The whole process has very little waste, since most of the byproducts are recaptured and recycled. And since it’s a closed-loop process, it has no perceptible odor, according to REG spokesperson Alicia Clancy.
“I was at the Wall Lake (Iowa) plant the week they did their annual plant tests,” she said. “I didn’t notice any odor until I was in the pre-treatment area — where someone had spilled a test container.”
The fuel that’s produced has a higher flash point than regular diesel, making it less likely to catch fire. It produces less carbon monoxide and almost no sulfur emissions. And some truckers have said their vehicles run cooler on biodiesel because of its lubricating abilities, though no formal tests have borne that out yet.
On top of that, Clancy said, it’s efficient to make. On top of that, Clancy said, it’s efficient to make. Every BTU of energy used to make, transport and distribute biodiesel ultimately produces 3.2 BTUs of fuel energy, she said. For petroleum, she said, it’s more like 0.8 BTUs.
It’s also non-toxic, she said.
“You could drink one of these vials of biodiesel and nothing would happen — except for its qualities as a lubricating agent,” she said as the audience laughed.
Fueling progress
REG will be building plants of this size in both Emporia and in Cairo, Ill. this year and four more are on the drawing board. Prior to now, the biggest plant the company has owned was a 12 million-gallon a year facility in Ralston, Iowa, although it manages some 30 million gallon plants.
Most deliveries to the plant will be by rail, Furco said, and about half its shipments will be sent out that way. The rest will go out by truck — about 12 to 15 trucks a day.
By federal standards, the company’s biodiesel plants are considered “minor emitters.” Only two hazardous chemicals are used, Furco said: methanol and hydrochloric acid.
Safety is taken very seriously, Furco said. Everything is “nitrogen blanketed” to prevent dangerous reactions and in addition to the usual fire protections, the plant will have 200,000 gallons of water on site for emergencies.
About 100 people will be needed to build the plant and about 30 will staff it once it’s complete. New employees will get five weeks of safety training, including two weeks of shadowing an experienced worker from another plant.
A standard shift will be 12 hours, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or vice versa. Workers will be on three days and off four for one week, and then reverse that schedule for the second week.
The plant can be remotely monitored from the main company headquarters in Iowa, and in an emergency it could be operated at long distance.
What about this?
The lot, located east of Norfolk Iron and Metal, still needs to be rezoned from light industrial to heavy industrial before construction can begin. And after the presentation, some neighbors had a few questions of their own.
A couple of neighbors asked about the company’s plans for stormwater retention. When it rains, a woman noted, parts of the lot tend to get flooded. Would the company’s construction help the situation or make it worse? Wernimont said he hadn’t known about the rain situation, but that the company would look at it.
Janet Haag told Wernimont that she wasn’t sure a biodiesel plant belonged near a residential area. The plant would be within the bounds of Industrial Park III, but some homes are nearby.
Haag also asked how the plant would be lit. Wernimont said the plant would be lit 24 hours a day, but the company hasn’t set the lighting arrangement. Haag suggested either an opaque fence or a screen.
For security purposes, the plant will have an eight-foot fence.
Emporia State University economics professor Rob Catlett asked whether the market for biodiesel could remain viable into the future.
“We’re betting our jobs and our industry,” Furco said.