Good news for us New Englanders. Maybe our prices will come down just a bit.
Biodiesel Manufacturing Plant Opens In Westerly
Operation will be able to distribute 3M gallons annually
Published on
8/1/2007
Westerly
— Reacting to a nationwide push to use cleaner-burning fuel, a local
businessman plans to open a 12,000-square-foot biodiesel manufacturing
plant today at an industrial site at 12 Gavitt Ave.
Philip Mason, who owns a local ServiceMaster franchise, said Mason
Biodiesel LLC has four tanks with a capacity of 25,000 gallons that
will be ready to distribute up to 3 million gallons annually of
biodiesel, a clean-burning alternative fuel produced from renewable
resources, such as soybean oil.
New biodiesel plants also are being planned in New Haven, Providence, and Newport, R.I.
“President Bush, in his State of the Union Address, talked about
biodiesel,” Mason, a Westerly resident, said in a phone interview.
“It's starting to get a lot of notice.”
Unblended agri-biodiesel, which is exempt from Rhode Island's road tax,
sells for 15 to 20 percent more than conventional fuel, wholesaling for
about $3.25 and costing about $3.50 a gallon to the end user.
Regular-grade gasoline is retailing for about $2.89 nationwide, a
little bit more in Connecticut.
Mason's plant is a wholesaler, selling to fuel distributors, trucking
companies and bus fleets, among others. Mason will not be distributing
the biodiesel; companies will send fuel trucks to his one-acre Westerly
site to fill up.
Mason owns the new company with his son Ryan. The concept for the
biodiesel facility came from another son, Tyler, who had been living in
Vermont, where the family hopes to build a second plant. Mason said his
sons, including Joshua, working this summer in between college
sessions, do all the chemical work. The business includes two other
technicians.
“Biodiesel is simple to use, biodegradable, nontoxic and essentially
free of sulfur,” Mason said. “It can be used in modern diesel engines
with little or no modifications.”
Mason said only 3 percent of all cars currently on the road in the
United States are diesels, but the number is expected to climb to about
10 percent in the next three years. He said biodiesel can be used in
any diesel automotive engine made after 1989. Before then, most fuel
hoses contained natural rubber, which degrades when placed in contact
with biodiesel.
Jamie Lohr, president of Guardian Fuel and Energy Systems in Westerly,
a company that last December started selling a blend of home heating
oil with biodiesel (at $2.59 a gallon, same as for regular heating
oil), said her entire fleet of delivery trucks was converted a month
and a half ago to a 20-percent mix of biofuel.
“Even my most New England-type, skeptical drivers had to say the trucks
had more pep, went up hills better and were quieter,” Lohr said. “We
believe they will last longer and run more efficiently on biodiesel.”
In Connecticut, Department of Transportation trucks recently were
converted to biodiesel. The state's bus fleet, including those run by
Southeast Area Transit, also is converting to the cleaner-burning fuel.
Glastonbury recently became the first municipality in the state to
switch to biodiesel, converting its town-owned bus fleet.
Much of the biodiesel used in cars and trucks is a blend containing 20
to 25 percent of the alternative fuel, combined with conventional
diesel. Home heating oil often is blended with about 5 percent of
biodiesel, which keeps costs down while reducing the carbon buildup in
furnaces, Lohr said.
Lohr said homeowners could gradually raise the biodiesel component to
20 percent, but anything above that level would be less efficient and
might not be worth the cost. In addition, she said that biodiesel tends
to gel in temperatures under 20 degrees, making it difficult to pump.
Connecticut now has only one biodiesel plant currently up and running,
BioPur Inc. in Bethlehem. A new biodiesel plant opening next week in
Newport, called Newport Biodiesel, will have a capacity of 500,000
gallons, focusing on home-heating oil and the maritime market. Hudson
Ecofuel is expected to open in Providence this summer.
Gus Kellogg, founder of Greenleaf Biofuels, a Guilford biodiesel
distributor that plans to build a 6-million-gallon-capacity plant in
New Haven in the coming months, said his plant will manufacture
biodiesel mostly from used yellow cooking oil from restaurants.
Kellogg said he has a couple of customers in North Stonington with
personal biodiesel filling stations, which can range from a 55-gallon
drum to a 275-gallon tank. His customers are concerned about more than
the environment, he added.
“Quite a few people do it for no other reason than national security,”
he said. “They have trouble with the idea of supporting oil regimes in
the Middle East and are doing everything they can to break that tie.
Several of our customers came from New York and were personally
affected by 9/11. It really hits home for some people.”
Mason Biodiesel LLC will be serving eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. For more information call (401) 315-5565 or visit www.mason-biodiesel.com.
