(Scott Sommerdorf l The Salt Lake Tribune) A biofuel crop on Salt Lake City's west side gets national attention from the U.S. Army on Monday. Standing among biodiesel-producing safflower plants are, from left, Alan Weber, a feedstock specialist for the National Biodiesel Board; Keith Eastin, vice president for the Louis Berger Group; Jeffrey Ward, deputy engineer for the U.S. Army Installation Management Command; and Dallas Hanks, of the Utah State University Extension. The Army is considering planting similar crops at military installations.
The prickly leafed crop is hardly inviting — it is like a weed sprouting atop 20 acres of parched government land near Salt Lake City International Airport.
And yet, the safflower planted as part of Salt Lake County’s urban-farming initiative holds a potential fuel source that has attracted the attention of the U.S. Army.
Jeffrey Ward, deputy engineer for the U.S. Army Installation Management Command, inspected the safflower crop Monday with a National Biodiesel Board representative and a consultant from the environmental engineering and restoration firm Louis Berger Group to determine whether to seed a similar program on military lands.
“We are very interested in getting biodiesel and using our lands to support our own energy needs,” Ward said. “We want to use what you have learned to potentially go onto Army installations and see what might be possible.”
This is an important story about 20 little acres of land that caught the attention of the Army. Yes it would be good if the Army did not depend on foreign oil. Go Army, show us all how biodiesel is done.
Image from: http://www.70centsagallon.com/
Recent multi-million dollar investments in algae-biofuel companies ($200 million IPO for PetroAlgae and $52 million to help commercialize Solazyme) is fueling some speculation of its own on how soon algae-based biofuels, in particular, biodiesel, might be available for consumers and when it would be commercially competitive.
This article from Biofuel Digest breaks down the “bears” and “bulls” views of these investments, as well as the Digest’s take on these developments:
A significant number of voices in the community continue to caution that algal biofuels are 10 years away, or likely to arrive at commercial scale only in the waning years of the existing Renewable Fuel Standard. However, we see increasing numbers of signs of commercial traction in the higher priced co-products area, such as nutraceuticals.
With the global market for algae nutraceuticals at 5000 tonnes per year and not showing immense growth signs, algal producers will need to establish new markets rather than simply aim to use technology to flood existing markets with low-cost product. The nature of that transitional set of end products?
Food-grade oil may be one path.
The other: well, let’s spell it out in three words. United States military.
The article goes on to point out the U.S. Navy or Air Force are working actively to have as much as half of their fuel come from renewable energy as early as 2016. The authors also did their history, making parallels to the British Navy’s conversion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from coal to oil … and how that move helped put the Brits on top of the world’s navies at the time. It also led to the rise of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now known as BP.
The military has always been a powerful force in the development of technology, and it appears that biodiesel from algae is too good to pass up. As I understand it, algal oil is quite versatile.
Photo from: here
Employees at the Enterprise, Ala., Public Works Facility can add a new duty to their job descriptions: biodiesel production. After 15 years of development, the city officially announced its new biodiesel facility is up and running, with major supporter Gov. Bob Riley in attendance. Businesses such as the Greenside Grill, McDonald’s, and the local high school will all provide waste cooking oil to the plant, helping the community-scale biodiesel refinery scaled at 70,000 gallons a year secure local feedstock. The plant will only run at 30 percent now, however, producing about 21,000 gallons of biodiesel per annum. The plant has already received a $300,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, and anticipates partnering with surrounding communities for feedstock access and fuel supply agreements.
The state helped this biodiesel facility come into being, and perhaps that’s a good lesson here, biodiesel can add jobs, clean the air, and recycle waste vegetable oil all for their own state. Biodiesel is a local fuel.
Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group (REG) has held a grand re-opening of its Seneca, Illinois biodiesel plant after taking over the 60 million-gallon-a-year biodiesel and glycerin facility from Nova Biosource Fuels.
REG celebrated the occasion with a ribbon cutting ceremony and by selling the first load of REG-9000 biodiesel from the refinery to Meier Oil of Ashkum Illinois last Thursday.
The REG Seneca facility has three side-by-side 20 mgy biodiesel process units, a technical grade glycerin refining facility, raw material and finished product storage as well as rail car and truck unloading and loading with the potential for barge transportation that had been idled for more than a year. This re-opening put 38 plant workers back on the job.
REG now wholly-owns five biodiesel production businesses and markets biodiesel in 49 states.