2 SC Firms to Celebrate Nat'l Bioenergy Day via New Collaboration

(Midlands Biofuels/Biodiesel Magazine) ATP-SC LLC and Midlands Biofuels jointly announced an innovative collaboration to grow biocrops, produce, sell and utilize solid and liquid biofuels, and to expand the state’s bioeconomy, starting in Allendale, S.C., and expanding across the state.
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ATP-SC LLC, an Allendale-based operating affiliate of Columbia, S.C.-based Agri-Tech Producers LLC and founded by Joe James, is developing a pilot torrefaction plant at 1624 Bluff Road in Allendale, S.C., to convert biomass—plant and woody material—into a variety of bioproducts including a clean and renewable biocoal, which is co-fired in coal-burning electric plants with minimal alterations to help reduce carbon and chemical pollution.

Midlands Biofuels, owned by “Bio” Joe Renwick, converts waste cooking oil into a cleaner and renewable biodiesel fuel and has just begun its waste oil collections in Allendale. “Bio” Joe Renwick recently asked “Torre-Joe James” if he would grow the oilseed crop canola so Midlands would have an increasing supply of cooking oil that it could sell to the restaurants from which it collects used cooking oil.

James had already leased a 40-acre farm field, immediately adjacent to its Allendale pilot plant, with the intention of growing biomass sorghum next spring. However, Renwick’s request created an opportunity for James to immediately put his idle acreage to work, growing canola, a winter crop, while still planting his biocrop in the spring.

James and Renwick are hopeful that this small collaboration will inspire similar and larger collaborations across the state, where farmers can both grow canola for Renwick and biocrops for James on the same farm. Like James, participating farmers can purchase biodiesel for use in their tractors at a $1 per gallon discount from Midlands Biofuels for a limited time, and also benefit from added revenues from two crop rotations on a field per year. READ MORE