Carlos Litulo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A worker in Mozambique holding jatropha seeds. Valero Energy entered into a deal to gain access to jatropha-based biodiesel.
Valero Energy, the largest American refiner, is taking another step toward building up its renewable fuel supplies. The San Antonio-based company on Friday agreed to a five-year deal with an Australian biofuel refiner to obtain biodiesel made from jatropha.
The deal also allows Valero to buy a 25 percent stake in the Australian company, Mission NewEnergy.
Mission will supply Valero with up to 60 million gallons of biodiesel a year, starting next year. Under the terms of the agreement, Valero can double that amount and extend the contract by an additional five years. The value of the contract could be as high as $3.5 billion, Mission said in a statement.
When oil / fat feedstock is converted into biodiesel using supercritical methanol, the biodiesel can be collected as oil phase by a simple phase separation. The methanol phase includes glycerol as a co-product, which then can be separated. Photo from: http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2709
DES MOINES, Iowa - A central Iowa plant could soon begin producing jet fuel from poultry fat. Bolingbrook, Ill.-based Elevance Renewable Sciences plans to build a $15 million plant in Newton, adding onto an existing biodiesel operation. The experimental operation plans to use plant oils and poultry fat as building blocks to replace petroleum-based chemicals used to make myriad products, including jet fuel, lubricants, adhesives and even cosmetics and candles. "It allows us to make a very interesting slate of products, which is different and somewhat in contrast to how poultry fat is used today," said K'Lynne Johnson, Elevance's chief executive officer. "We are taking a waste stream of products ... and using it in a higher value manner."
San Francisco city workers in front of SFPUC truck (Credit: SFGOV) Photo from: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10158246-48.html
NASHUA – Starting up a new business is tough, but starting up in a new industry can be even tougher.
That helps explain why the city’s cutting-edge biodiesel refinery, one of a handful of its kind in the country, hasn’t begun production a year after its grand opening.
Batchelder Biodiesel Refineries is still awaiting certification from the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) so it can sell fuel made from “brown grease,” the gunkiest leftovers from restaurants.
“That has taken substantially longer than we all anticipated because ASTM testing has changed,” said Christopher Langille, a research associate at Keene State University, who’s part of the group developing the refinery and a related biodiesel project in Keene.
Evidently, this is one of the most difficult of feedstocks to work with, but every restaurant puts out gallons of this “brown grease”, amazing that fuel can yet be made from this messy stuff.
SOUTH TOLEDO - An estimated $25 million in mostly federal stimulus recovery funds is headed to Toledo that will help build a bio-refinery plant that in time could jump-start new energy across the country.
The new test facility, located inside Red Lion Bio Energy on Research Drive near the University of Toledo Medical Center campus and Bowsher High School, will keep and create upwards of 100 new jobs.
On-hand for the announcement was Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, and other dignitaries.