Biodiesel’s Cutting Edge

January 04, 2019

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by Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine) Biodiesel Magazine profiles nine companies whose process technologies, products and services are on the frontline of change in this industry.

Third Coast Commodities

Biodiesel feedstock trading is evolving, and Third Coast Commodities is one of the firms ushering in this change.

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The only way to improve the pricing and contracting models, Hoyt (Nicholas Hoyt, head of risk management) says, is to bring transparency to the market.

One important aspect of effective risk management is leveraging historical data. Aggregating, and perhaps more importantly, understanding that data to help customers is critical in today’s environment. “We take all this information to make better decisions for our clients,” Hoyt says. “Our goal is to bring market price transparency to our clients so they can maximize their business margins and best execute logistics. We use the data to understand price relationships over time.”

Hoyt says when it comes down to it, there isn’t a single byproduct or coproduct for which any feedstock provider is going to slow down their core business operations.

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Hoyt says Third Coast Commodities is implementing a blockchain-type approach to the business.

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“All forms of sustainability certifications in the biofuels industry use a basic form of blockchain technology,” he explains.

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Another important aspect of the service Third Coast Commodities provides to its clients is working to control transportation costs and executing on-time deliveries.

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BDI
Packaging the highly variable process of retrofitting disparate biodiesel facilities with unique operations into an executable program for the industry requires mastery gained over decades. This is precisely what Austria-based BDI-BioEnergy International GmbH has done with its RetroFit Program.

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She (Christine Riedl, BDI’s technical sales manager) says retrofits involve much more detailed discussions than greenfield builds.

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The customized optimization of BDI’s retrofits often involves integration of a proprietary pretreatment process to remove feedstock impurities and a biodiesel distillation column to meet stringent fuel specifications. In its RetroFit Program, BDI also offers a patented esterification process for high free fatty acid (FFA) feedstock, as well as glycerin distillation to achieve technical- or USP-grade glycerin.

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Leem Filtration
Leem Filtration has been servicing the biodiesel industry for 10 years and has been in business since 1962. After supplying the corn sweetener, sugar, edible oils and used cooking oil industries with filters for decades, moving into the biodiesel space was a natural fit, says Bill Boyd, sales manager for Leem Filtration, who has been in the filtration business for 26 years.

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Leem Filtration offers a range of filter sizes, from as small as 50 square feet up to 1,275 square feet for vertical filters, and from 300 square feet to 1,650 square feet for horizontal ones. Boyd says many plants run filters in tandem.

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“A number of years ago we came up with a welded design that eliminates rivets, which reduces the chance of leaks. It uses a wedge wire core in the center so it doesn’t plug up in the center of the leaf. It works particularly well for animal fats and other products that tend to clog up the center of the leaf. No one makes this but us.”

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Jatro Renewables
In January 2018, Raj Mosali, co-founder and CEO of Jatrodiesel, reorganized his company and rechristened it Jatro Renewables Inc. to better fulfill his vision and adapt to the changing biofuels business model. “My vision is to be a full-service provider, not just a process technology provider,” Mosali says.

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Mosali says he would like to leverage this expertise in other related areas, including renewable diesel, higher-efficiency extractions and more.

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Jatro Renewables’ supercritical technology is a single-stage, continuous process that puts no limit on free fatty acids. It cuts the cost of traditional biodiesel refining by 25 percent, Mosali says, in part by eliminating the need for catalysts.

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PQ Corp.
PQ Corp. is a globally focused specialty chemical company involved in several markets, including oil and gas, food and beverage, and, of course, biodiesel.

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For the biodiesel industry, PQ Corp. manufactures adsorbents in ISO-certified plants in the U.S., Brazil and the Netherlands and has additional silica manufacturing capabilities in Indonesia and the U.K. Research and development efforts as well as laboratory testing services are provided from both Europe and the U.S...

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John McNichol, PQ Corp.’s market development manager, says the company is extremely energized by the growth potential in biodiesel. “Demand is increasing globally due to both expanded mandates on the use of biodiesel, such as B20 requirements in some countries, as well as a general green movement,” McNichol says

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McNichol notes that in addition to biodiesel, PQ Corp. is also focusing on servicing the renewable diesel industry.

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RINAlliance
Owned by the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa, RINAlliance is a national firm specializing in providing petroleum jobbers and marketers cost-effective solutions for tracking, reporting and managing RIN credits.

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RINAlliance recently upgraded its proprietary software to provide customized RIN tracking for business metrics.

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Some pending changes to the RFS program, such as the push for greater transparency in RIN trading, will help, Menning (Reo Menning, executive vice president) says. Other changes, such as the potential for marketers to sell RINs directly to obligated parties, will make it challenging for aggregators. “Obligated parties aren’t going to want to be RIN aggregators,” she says. “Several ideas have been put out there to consider. They will have to determine which makes sense. The RIN market is more efficient if we have aggregators.”

RINAlliance works with small and large companies alike.

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RPS
The keys to success for alternative biodiesel process technologies are widening a producer’s feedstock choices and lowering both capital and operational costs while achieving better product yields and quality compared to conventional techniques. Rahul Bobbili, president and chief technical officer for San Jose, California-based Renewable Process Solutions Inc., says Hybrid.T—a technology he developed combining supercritical and traditional biodiesel processing—can accomplish all this and more. The process builds on RPS’s experience developing a supercritical plant co-located with Calgren Renewables’ ethanol facility in Pixley, California, which is near completion.

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“The crude glycerin is greater than 80 percent pure, and ASTM-spec biodiesel yield is greater than 99.5 percent,” Bobbili says.

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“We work with bolt-on upgrades for biodiesel producers, and we cater to ethanol producers who want bolt-on systems to produce biodiesel,” he says. “The advantage of a Hybrid.T retrofit for a transesterification facility processing pure soybean oil is, if the customer wants to process higher FFA, we can simply bolt on a frontend fat-stripping column and supercritical system that will operate in parallel to their transesterification process.”

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RPS also offers prospective renewable diesel producers smaller-scale hydrotreatment technology coupled with a subcritical countercurrent hydrolysis pretreatment step to convert triglycerides to FFA before hydrotreatment.

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Imerys
The multinational company Imerys specializes in the production and processing of industrial and advanced minerals. Known throughout the biodiesel industry for its CynerSorb-branded adsorbents, for the past year Imerys has been developing cold filtration solutions for the biodiesel industry using its Harborlite-branded perlite.

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Smisson-Mathis Energy
A number of jurisdictions are pushing to eliminate the disposal of fats, oils and greases (FOG) in landfills. “Some jurisdictions have already banned land application of this material,” says Ken Brown, CEO of Smisson-Mathis Energy LLC. “And others are looking at capping how much can end up in landfills. Part of our mission is finding better solutions for this material.”

SME, a joint venture between Dublin, Georgia-based Tactical Fabrication LLC and Smisson Energy LLC of Macon, Georgia, is retrofitting an existing, idled biodiesel production facility in Laurens County, Georgia. The innovative process technology couples liquid enzymatic and resin technologies and patent-pending advanced distillation to reduce sulfur from hundreds of parts per million (ppm) in FOG-based biodiesel to near zero.

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Frankie Mathis, the chief technology officer for SME and CEO of Tactical Fabrication, says while it takes money to implement the technology, there is much more to it. “There’s a lot of meeting of the minds that had to take place, ideas exchanged, to get where we are today,” he says. “Once we figured out how to have consistent reactions with brown grease, the next thing was working with suppliers to procure good material for biodiesel production. That was a challenge. Many brown grease collectors collect more than brown grease—and by that I mean impurities.” He says only 45 percent of some loads were convertible to biodiesel. “More than half the material was not a glyceride or free fatty acid,” Mathis says, adding that he has worked with brown grease suppliers from across the Southeast to find quality product. “The only consistency is its inconsistency.”

The next challenge, Mathis says, has been scaling the advanced distillation process from pilot to production scale.

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Mathis says the use of enzymes in the process is what makes it all possible.

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Brown says SME is working directly with municipalities, utilities and counties to implement FOG harvesting and biodiesel production.

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“We’re not just a biodiesel company but a waste management company with the intention of integrating ourselves within municipalities and wastewater treatment (WWT) plants to remove FOG from their waste streams. ..."

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“We are able to put the water back into the WWT facility, the solids or food particles remain landfilled, which are perfect for biodigesters, and we leave with the oil.”

“To keep it simple, municipalities are throwing BTUs away,” Brown says. “We are harvesting those BTUs as part of our integrated solution for reducing the volume of disposed material. We believe this technology has applications worldwide.” READ MORE

Tags

BioRefineries/Renewable Fuel Production biodiesel Pennsylvania Renewable Diesel/Green Diesel/HVO/Paraffinic Diesel BioChemicals/Renewable Chemicals fuel transportation biomass transportation feedstock transportation aggregation market forces biodiesel prices logistics engineering Austria FOG (Fats/Oils/Grease) bolt-on loan guarantees pilot scale commercialization wastewater water treatment grease brown grease yellow grease Georgia enzymes Landfills California RINs price RINs (Renewable Identification Numbers) RINs markets Transportation Fuels Policy environmental policy Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS and RFS2) Regulations-Federal regulations EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Investing Financing Green Jobs markets/sales

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