The Competitive Edge: Benefuel Inc.

Benefuel Inc.

Q: What was the reason for founding your organization – what was the open niche you saw that could be addressed with a new product or service? What was the problem, or gap, or opportunity?

Benefuel recognized that biodiesel production from virgin oil seeds was neither profitable nor sustainable long term. However, to process lower quality fats or oils required an ability to either remove the free fatty acid component or put in additional process technology to convert it into biodiesel. This was expensive, inefficient and difficult to operate reliability.

As a result, Benefuel worked to develop a novel and patented, catalytic refining process that combines transesterification and esterification which allows the efficient production of biodiesel from low cost waste fats and oil to produce a low carbon, low cost fuel. This business model takes advantage of the multitude of waste feedstocks, worldwide.

Q: Tell us about your organization. What do you do?

Benefuel Inc. is a biodiesel process technology and production company with offices in Ottawa, Ontario and Coppell, Texas. Over the last 12 years, the company has developed a novel, next-generation technology for manufacturing biodiesel and bio-lubricants. Benefuel’s patented ENSEL® process allows for the production of very low-carbon biodiesel, by using lower cost, high free fatty acid feedstocks and converting them efficiently into a high-quality biodiesel and technical grade glycerin.

Q: What stage of development are you? 

Commercial stage – have mature products or services on the market.

Q: What do your technologies, products or services do and accomplish – how does it (they) work, who is it (they) aimed for?

Benefuel’s ENSEL technology can covert low value, high FFA feedstocks into high purity biodiesel, biolubricants and technical grade glycerin.

Benefuel’s novel process design and proprietary catalyst offers the highest rate of conversion and yield of waste oils to finished spec biodiesel of any commercially demonstrated process.

The efficiency and yields that Benefuel’s refining process achieves combined with the use of low carbon feedstocks results in one of the lowest carbon fuels available.

Benefuel achieves a lower carbon intensity per gallon, or per dollar of invested capital, than any other available renewable or biodiesel technology available in the market today.

Q: Competitively, what gives your technology, product or service set an edge in cost or performance, sustainability, or any other aspect, that makes it stand out from the crowd, In short, what makes it transformative?

Benefuel combines two refining steps (esterification & transesterification) into a single step, eliminating both capital and operating costs in doing so.

Benefuel’s proprietary refining catalyst achieves extremely high rates of conversion and yields of all fats and oils.  This when combined with the use of low carbon feedstocks like Used Cooking Oil, Yellow Grease, Distillers Corn Oil and animal fats results in one of the lowest cost renewable fuels with one of the lowest carbon intensity scores.

One gallon of Benefuel’s biodiesel has 80% less GHG emissions than petroleum diesel.

Q: What are the 3 top milestones you have accomplished in the past 3 years?

1. Completed the build and start-up of a 50 million gallon per year biodiesel refinery.
2. Demonstrated the conversion efficacy of Benefuel’s proprietary catalyst and longevity with over 2.5 years of operating history.
3. Gathered significant lessons learned and incorporated them into the 2.0 design basis for future expansion.

Q: What are the 3 top milestones you will accomplish in the next 3 years?

1. Complete the design and engineering of version 2.0 of Benefuel’s ENSEL refining process.
2. Deploy the first modular refining unit starting with Sarnia, Ontario.
3. Establish a strong financial partner that is committed to GHG reduction and climate change to rapidly deploy additional refineries in the key, low carbon markets on a global basis.

Where can I learn more about Benefuel?

Click here to visit Benefuel’s website.