Oil washing with glycerin; process improvements and an expedition by bio truck.

It has been an amazing two months at Promethean!

We are in the process of increasing our storage capacity for finished and interim products by about 20,000 gallons.

The irony is our oil supplies have been pretty low overall, with theft a major issue for us at the moment. The rain, although a blessing in general for California, is anathema to our oil quality, as water is not conducive for maintaining low FFA (free fatty acid) concentrations.

To address these issues I have begun revisiting some process approach alternatives including alkali refining, modified acid esterification, glycerin washing, and a low temperature “glycerolysis” approach. I have also successfully developed a new approach to to soap and sterols removal in the wake of converting high FFA feed stocks.  I hope to have results worth publishing in July or August of 2011; the work is very promising and I hope to have some data that can be put into modeling an automated process approach. Or not. We shall see.

Andy Pag (https://www.biotruckexpedition.com/) will be arriving at the plant tomorrow morning, March 29th, 2011.  He has been making his way around the world in a recycled Mercedes school bus running primarily on biodiesel. He has been visiting biodiesel plants in Southern California of late, including New Leaf Biofuels of San Diego.

We get lots of requests to sponsor various road trips or to donate fuel, so many that of late I have become increasingly selective of the types of folks and escapades  we support.  I sometimes wish I was the one travelling across the world in a biodiesel-powered fun bus. Oh well…maybe one day it will be my turn.

Make it a better place,

Todd

If its not feedstock its storage.

If we’re not short on feedstock around here, then we’re short on storage. If we’re short on storage, then we’re either drowning in feedstock, or the way the feedstock is divided is a problem.

Capacity and the conventional notions of supply and demand applied to the manufacture of biodiesel from used cooking oil are anachronistic at best, applied by the foolhardy and overly optimistic.

Used cooking oil prices have increased 50% in the last year, from a low of roughly .16/lb to a recent high of .36/lb. That’s $2.70 per gallon.

Used cooking oil is a limited resource, valued for a variety of applications including feeding cattle and poultry, industrial lubricants, and even recycling and reuse for human consumption in other countries.

At the cooperative we collect and purchase used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel and other methyl ester products. We also take oil from members and clean it for their use. The rendering component of our endeavor is the area we were least prepared for; I had planned on cleaner oil, and even though I had experience pumping oil before starting the cooperative, I had overestimated the ability to selectively pick and choose the right accounts to essentially cherry pick the easiest oils to deal with while underestimating the impact the greatest recession in modern history would have on the sushi restaurants in our 150 mile service area.

Oil collection costs are also a factor often underestimated in most of the biodiesel business plans I am often asked to peer review.

Its expensive stuff. Pumps. Pumper trucks for the more advanced or affluent. Collection containers, marketing materials, salaries and/or commissions for the sales staff. Last, but far from the least, are the pumpers themselves, a rare breed of folks who can dedicate themselves to overcoming the smells and the spills that are part of every day on the job.

The secret is that sustainable energy from recycling is not a pristine endeavor. It is messy. It smells. There are times when it is closer to sewer maintenance or waste remediation than it is to bioscience or chemistry.

We should not forget that nature has made waste management essential for a healthy ecosystem. In fact, in natural systems there is no waste. The closer we as a society come to achieving natures balance in our pursuit of energy, the closer we come to achieving true balance; true sustainability.

Nature does not over complicate things with free market economics. Without human interference what is sustainable in nature thrives; what is not faces extinction.

So many of the opportunities in front of us will require careful planning, technical expertise, and preparedness to realize favorable results.

When I started Promethean I was looking for something simple. Waste made into sustainable energy.

A simple plan, so challenging in reality that every day is transformed into an adventure. The challenges are breathtaking, the sense of accomplishment tremendous, the possibilities endless.

Great stuff!

Make it a better place.

Todd

Renewed biodiesel tax credit. 2011 may see renewed growth cycle.

In Washington, President Barack Obama today signed H.R. 4853, the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.

Last night, the US House of Representatives voted to approve the deal, which extends the ethanol tax credit through 2011, and retroactively extends the biodiesel tax incentive and the renewable diesel incentive through 2011. The bill also renewed the 54-cent tariff on Brazilian ethanol through 2011.

The majority of  US ethanol and biodiesel interests are most likely overjoyed.

Obviously a long term solution must be put in place to make the industry viable, but I am happy that the short term looks brighter for some of the industry players. The credit has already been shown to be less than a cure-all for the numerous challenges that face the biodiesel industry; even prior to the lapse of the credit the majority of plants stood idle, and there remains uncertainty as to whether or not plants lost over the course of the nearly 12 month lapse will be able to rekindle the spark of operations. That said, there is definite hope that this will revive some of the momentum lost and those of us still standing have had to weather a storm that has likely made us tougher and stronger in an industry that punishes inefficient operations.

I also have to eat some crow. I did not believe that the credit was returning, and I find this to be something of a political “Hail Mary”.

Crow never tasted so good.

Make it a better place!

Todd

True believers.

The antithesis of the new era of alternative fuels is the requirement that it compete with the pricing of  legacy technologies.

The reality is that we must. We know this at Promethean. We work long and hard making something that with current technology is a craft, a science-assisted art form.

Yet it is more than that. We by necessity must wrangle order from the chaos and produce something reliable, to a standard that is arguably higher than that of the petroleum products we seek to enhance, extend, and ultimately replace.

We have been slowly increasing our production volumes. Our goal is to achieve 13,000 gallons per week in the next 60 days. Not an easily achieved goal, but the target has been set and so I have been diligently calling other rendering companies and grease transporters in an attempt to acquire enough oil to meet the production targets. This task has been made more difficult by recent price increases for used cooking oil in the commodities markets, in part due to reduced availability of the stuff in these recessionary times.

Theft is on the rise as well. Grease theft is an age-old problem of the industry, and is something that we are always attempting to find innovative ways to combat.

The challenges abound, and the road ahead still has a few sharp turns and blind spots to navigate. Nevertheless, our confidence grows in equal measure to our expertise.

Ultimately, to be sustainable our cooperative must function as a business, and a business eats sales. The road ahead ends in maturing our products and developing our markets. In the short term we need to focus our efforts there if we want to achieve our long term goals.

We are true believers. I am proud to be surrounded by like-minded idealists.

Make it a better place.

Todd

Our mission may not suit you.

WE ARE GOING TO RAISE OUR PRICES.
WE HAVE TO RAISE OUR PRICES.
EVERY CONVERSATION I HAVE WITH ANYONE INTERESTED IN USING OR PROMOTING BIOFUELS ALWAYS IS ACCOMPANIED WITH A BRIEF SEGMENT RELATED TO PRICING. USUALLY THE
PROBLEM STARTS AFTER I HAVE NAMED THE CURRENT PRICE AND I RECEIVE A LOOK OF HONEST SURPRISE FOLLOWED BY A STATEMENT AKIN TO “I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CHEAPER THAN DIESEL”.
IN MY HEART OF HEARTS I ALWAYS WANT TO REPLY “IF YOU CALL THE TRAGEDY OF 9/11, THE IRAQI WAR, THE SIEGE OF AFGANISTAN, AND THE LOSS OF OUR ABILITY TO BOARD A PLANE WITHOUT THE NECESSITY OF A THOROUGH SEARCH CHEAPER
THAN PAYING AN EXTRA $1 AT THE PUMP, OUR SORT OF REVOLUTIONARY GAME CHANGING APPROACHES TO SOLVING SOME OF AMERICAS ENERGY PROBLEMS MAY BE LOST ON YOU.
IF YOU CALL 4,400 FALLEN SOLDIERS AND AN ADDITIONAL 31,929 WOUNDED LESS EXPENSIVE, OR CONSIDER THE 1 TRILLION DOLLARS WE AS A NATION HAVE SPENT, MUCH OF IT BORROWED
AGAINST OUR CHILDRENS FUTURE, AN INEXPENSIVE ROUTE TO THE CONTROL OF OUR ENERGY DESTINY, OUR MISSION MAY NOT SUIT YOU.
I WISH I COULD TELL OUR MEMBERS THAT THEY WOULD BENEFIT FROM A TAX DEDUCTION, OR SOME OTHER VALUE ADDED OPTION TO MAKE UP FOR THE OBVIOUSLY DIFFERENT AMOUNT YOU PAY FOR OUR BIOFUEL.
I CAN TELL YOU THAT I BELIEVE PROFOUNDLY THAT IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

It’s October.

Oh my how the time has flown.

There have been so many changes on project the last two months. We have been working all hours of the day and night.

The plant has become my surrogate home.  I’m sure more than a few of us feel the same.

Overall as an industry we have been waiting for a variety of factors to make the biofuels sector a sustainable industry. The list is long: congressional and legislative support of our true costs, RINS (renewable identification numbers), state and local mandates, as well as a change in the tone of consumer thinking.

Of course the waiting is our problem. In many cases for our brothers in arms, the waiting has been terminal.

WE ARE GOING TO RAISE OUR PRICES.

We have to raise our prices.

Nearly every conversation I have with anyone interested in using or promoting biofuels always is accompanied with a brief discussion related to pricing. Usually the opportunity starts after I have named the current price of fuel and I receive a look of honest surprise followed by a statement akin to “I thought it would be cheaper than diesel.”

In my heart of hearts I always want to reply by saying, “If you call the tragedy of 9/11, the Iraqi War, the Siege of Afghanistan, and the loss of our ability to board a plane without the necessity of standing in line for the privilege of a thorough search cheaper than paying an extra $1 at the pump, our sort of revolutionary game changing approaches to solving some of America’s energy problems may be lost on you.”

If you call more than 4,400 fallen soldiers and an additional 31,929 wounded less expensive, or consider the $1 trillion we as a nation have spent, much of it borrowed against our children’s future, an inexpensive route to the control of our energy destiny, our mission may not suit you.

I wish I could tell our members that they would benefit from a tax deduction,  or some other value-added option to make up for the obviously different amount paid at times for our biofuel.

I CAN TELL YOU THAT I BELIEVE PROFOUNDLY THAT IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Only time will tell.

Make it a better place!

Todd

It is never okay to quit.

I know that those of us at the cooperative represent a collection of talented, dedicated, and intelligent individuals on the forefront of advancing our local community towards sustainable energy independence. Of course being talented, dedicated, and intelligent does not guarantee success every time, and the simple fact of the matter is that we are experiencing some growing pains.

There are a thousand outstanding projects, and due to the nature of our location, our breadth of services, and our open door policy there are at times a thousand threats to focus.

We are working on quality and quality control, inventory tracking, accurate product delivery, and installation of additional storage.

Our first team of interns has settled in, made temporary homes, and very soon will begin to move on to begin living their lives off project.

We continue to attract homebrewers to the plant, sharing ideas, swapping stories, and supplying fellow enthusiasts with a solution or piece of equipment.

There is still no credit, although the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means recently released a draft version of the Domestic Manufacturing and Energy Job Act of 2010 includes an extension of the federal excise tax credit through 2011 as well as a retroactive reinstatement for all of 2010.  There will be some time before this draft can be tailored into law if ever it makes it that far.

 We are a long way from where  we will be six months from now. We are farther away from where we were six months ago. Two steps forward. One step backwards.

It’s okay to fail.

It’s never okay to quit.

Make it a better place!

Todd

Time for change.

It has been 81 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to stream into the Gulf of Mexico. In that time,  BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount of oil it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

Prior to the event, according to a Washington Post article,  BP had claimed a cleanup capacity of  just under 492,000 barrels per day. They have averaged over the course of this disaster under 900 barrels per day.

Many of us have spent the last few years trying to spread the word about global warming. Few of us imagined that an accident of this scale was not only a possibility, but an eventual certainty.

I have been fielding questions recently from the press and other interested parties, mostly interested in discovering if I believe this accident will incite the nation to the immediate adoption of an energy policy that truly promotes the adoption of biofuels.

I do not believe so, not because I believe that the general public will not want better solutions, or that the politics of energy are too complex and intertwined with the system of campaign financing to effect substantive change in this arena.

I do not believe so because we as a nation and member of the global community do not have a viable replacement for petroleum. We have solutions that will move us towards energy independence as it pertains to our importation of foreign oil. The latter is fundamentally different than supplanting our use of petroleum.

I believe, as I suspect the majority of us working in this sector do as well, that our use of petroleum will increase over the next decade. Currently approximately 250 million vehicles are active on the nations roads. Of that, 18 million 18-wheelers are responsible for almost 50% of our fuel utilization.

According to the Department of Energy, 94% of our commercial goods are transported in seagoing vessels, trains, and trucks that rely on diesel fuels for power. The technological and environmental issues facing the inhabitants of the afflicted regions are in part a result of failed oversight, and they also serve as harbingers exposing the fundamental flaw in our national approach to energy. The problem is not just the source of our energy, albeit foreign or domestic, but the type of energy itself.

Big oil may not ever warm to the notion that farmers, renderers and recyclers may inherit the mantle that is currently occupied by the deep oil rigs and land-based drilling that currently dominate the fluid energy industry, but that is what will be necessary to make biofuels and other energy alternatives viable in an appropriate timeframe.

This is the time.

Now is the time for us as a nation to come together and enact the policies and incentives necessary to accelerate and maximize the production of clean energy in its myriad forms.

Instead of looking for a single solution, as a nation we should strive to explore and implement every viable technology and let the marketplace decide which energy solutions are worthy for major adoption over time.

We used to talk about global warming and the threat of military conflict as the inevitable dire consequence of a dependency on foreign oil when a more imminent threat may simply be toxic crude washng up on your local beach, poisoned sea life that is toxic to eat, and millions of gallons of toxic dispersants injected into the oceans with competely unknown long term consequences.

What is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is tragic. It is time for us to come together as a nation and commit to change.

Make it a better place,

Todd

Oil spills, biodiesel calculators, and the CDFA.

Like all of us I have spent the last few weeks observing the environmental horror that has befallen the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Nothing less than catastrophic ill can result from an oil spill of this magnitude. The environmental costs related to this accident will span generations and will alter commercial fishing and the local economy for the forseeable future. I am proud that the majority of biodiesel producers have operations that pose environmental risks several orders of magnitude lower than what we are seeing with events in Louisiana.

Clearly we need to develop clean, renewable, less perilous energy solutions.

We have been working very hard over the last few weeks.

We somehow finished a grant proposal, conducted a seemingly endless stream of intern interviews, cut man-ways for tanks, installed racking systems, and began a general reorganization of the plant. We made batches, fixed batches, and in one case gave up on a batch of fuel. We visited customer sights, delivered solutions, received a visit from an agent from the California Department of Forestry and Agriculture (CDFA) who inspected our facility towards fulfillment of the quarterly inspections required annually to maintain our rendering license .

I have been working on an update to a biodiesel recipe calculator. Feel free to take a look (click here for the Biodiesel Recipe Calculator) and email me your comments here. I hope to perform a major overhaul of this in the next month or two. If you have any suggestions for feature additions feel free to let us know.

Back to the Gulf Coast horror. We have been working on an animal friendly surfactant to assist with cleaning victims of the spill. The list of potential recipients includes turtles, seals, dolphins, pelicans, and a host of other creatures too numerous to enumerate.

HR 4213 is on the verge of passage, implementing amongst its other mandates the retroactive extension of the biodiesel excise tax credit. Many hope for passage by mid June. Reinstatement of the credit will not be not sufficient to drive major industry growth.

Make it a better place,

Todd

Steadily increasing.

The complexity of our design-build projects is steadily increasing. From constructing continuous flow methanol recovery units to welding 316L stainless steel manifolds for 4″ diameter pipe connections, we are asked to devise an ever-increasing array of solutions for a growing number of clients.

We also are awash in internal projects; the construction of an oil dryer; fabrication and installation of a new ion exchange column; the occasional major pump repair.

Although projects abound our first priority remains ramping up production. It is a work in progress, a process that requires patience and fortitude in equal measure. There are periods where progress seems at a standstill until a momentary breakthrough, sometimes a result of intellect but perhaps as often the consequence of simple dumb luck, leads to a process improvement or innovation.

We are in the process of collecting and reviewing our internship applicants for the Summer 2010 program. I must say that I am pretty anxious to start the final interview and acceptance process. Our interns have some very interesting and challenging assignments to look forward to here.

My hope is that over time Promethean can help develop some of the future leaders of clean, sustainable and renewable energy. I am sure making this hope a reality will also require some additional measure of patience and fortitude. I guess I better try to keep in mind that life is a journey and not a destination.

Make it a better place!

Todd

Accelerating Innovation

We may not have a large budget for R&D, but as an organization we are strongly committed to it.

The pursuit and development of intellectual capital are cornerstones to our long term sustainability. The development of new products, services, and solutions fuels our future.

This pursuit oftentimes ends in failure, but it also prepares us to face the rigors and growing pains any young and rapidly expanding organization faces in today’s economic climate. The focus is to learn and recover quickly from our failures, which requires a certain level of organizational maturity in our data collection and communication process that remains a work in progress for us here.

We are actively pursuing grants, refining our manufacturing process, evolving our systems, and preparing to operate at full speed. We still have several build projects for both internal use and external delivery, including constructing an oil dryer, outfitting a new ion exchange cannister (this will be beautiful!), and the fabrication of another of the specialty sight glasses dotting the plant that serve as harbingers of ester quality.

We also find ourselves engaged in a few of the garden variety plant modifications that  one finds necessary as one realizes that a sample port in the spot you thought would never need one is now a high priority.  Engineering reviews, oil wrangling, computer installations, vacuum pump repairs, and samples testing add to the abundant list of tasks completed, in process, or in queue.

Finally, we are in the midst of intern recruitment and selection.  Anna is really in charge of the recruitment part. We are excited at the level of response we have received, and I am convinced that this years selection will yield a force to be reckoned with during their summer on the glorious project that is Promethean Biofuels.

Make it a better place!

Todd