National Biodiesel Board Expo: special Biofuels Digest “heard on the floor” report

From Biofuels Digest correspondent Peter Brown

In California, the National Biodiesel Board Conference and Expo commenced in San Francisco.

There are new technologies, new business models, new players and new ideas, but they all have two things in common, funding and feedstock. There are of course new ways to meet these two requirements, by going down the food chain, and by converting what would normally not be convertible. More on new technologies and “heard on the floor” at biofuels digest.com.

In the first category BioFuelBox, a Silicon Valley startup is aiming dead bang at a very niche market, municipal or private wastewater treatment plants. We have a portable, all inclusive, I million gallon a year biodiesel production facility that will accept very high FFA waste grease and convert it to biodiesel. Our system will take high water content waste, dry it, and convert the waste into biodiesel while expelling the hard contaminants.”

The company requires that the municipality or partner company provide a site near the waste treatment plant, agree to a long term agreement for the feedstock and may or may not want the offtake.  Either way, the model allows the sale of the biodiesel to pay for the facility.  The first plant is scheduled to go online in March in Idaho at a potato processing facility. “Each industry has its peculiar set of contaminants, potatoes are high in starch, and our plants can be tweaked to take each situation in hand and control it.  We produce fully ASTM compliant fuel and our pilot plant has passed the new Cold Soak requirement with flying colors.”

To date renewable diesel has been the playing field of the large refineries and huge investments requiring high pressures, high temperatures and close proximity to petroleum refineries for the extraction and use of Hydrogen.

Last year’s Neste Oil announcement for a 320 KTn year renewable diesel facility in Singapore was not misprint, it reflected the fact that Neste Oil, one of the world’s giant refinery builders, would construct the plant at a petroleum hub coupled to  palm oil tanker routes.

Renewable diesel is a fuel alternative made from renewable feedstock  by creating a chemical or thermal reaction in blended petroleum and oil feedstock without using methanol and in the presence of a suitable catalyst. Renewable diesel is further broken down in standalone or co-processing production facilities.  Tellus, a small startup in Washington State, has chosen the standalone approach because it lends itself to smaller plants, and quicker build times.

“We are the next generation of biodiesel technology,” said David Nelson, the company spokesperson at the conference. “We can make ASTM D975 and compete in price with petroleum diesel. Our liquid catalyst contains cetane boosters, combustion improvers and binding agents to produce B70 bunker fuel with no glycerin losses,”

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