Green Energy Biofuel Expands Waste Processing Capabilities, Seeks New Markets

(Bio-Based Diesel Daily/Green Energy Biofuel) Green Energy Biofuel stands ready to provide waste recycling solutions for a variety of businesses and industries in the Southeast by turning costly liabilities into savings. Companies can leverage Green Energy Biofuel to help meet their environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) goals by no longer paying for waste to be landfilled. Virtually all organic waste streams, whether liquid or solid—including the dirtiest, least desirable materials—are responsibly converted into environmentally conscious products such as biofuels, compost material and more.

Green Energy Biofuel began in 2008 as Midlands Biofuels in Winnsboro, South Carolina.

“In less than five months, we retooled the plant from only making biodiesel to a multi-feedstock processor that can handle anything with grease in it. The Aiken plant went from sitting idle for years to now processing 10 different industrial commercial-scale waste streams from various facilities, generating a quarter-million gallons of biodiesel feedstock every month. We have built a redundant process to bring in hard-to-deal-with waste streams and effectively process them all with no downtime.” (BioJoe Renwick, Green Energy Biofuel co-founder and owner)

The GEB3 plant is divided into three sections to handle various wastes—the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The Good is designed for high-volume used cooking oil that needs minimal processing. The Bad is tailored to handle heavy sludge waste streams with solids and water extraction systems. “We can even recover the fats, oils and greases (FOG) from large companies’ wastewater treatment facilities,” BioJoe says. The Ugly is set up to process low-quality trap grease from food processors and restaurants, refining low carbon-intensity brown grease out of the muck for resale.

The company just closed on the purchase of ReSoil, a composting facility outside of Columbia, South Carolina. A big draw of this composting facility for Green Energy Biofuel is that the site has a Class III permit to compost all types of waste, including meats, which is very unique.

When processing waste, not all the material is reusable. “Green Energy Biofuel generates tons of compostable waste per month processing waste cooking grease,” BioJoe says. “We spend a quarter-million dollars in disposal fees. Now, all of this can be taken directly to our new facility, blended and composted. This is a way to add more value and services to our existing and future customers too.” Green Energy Biofuel’s waste cannot be composted by itself. But when mixed with streams such as soybean residues from large agricultural processing facilities, for which these ag companies often pay to be landfilled, the combination makes a “beautiful composting material,” BioJoe says.

The company is not stopping with the purchase of a composting site. Green Energy Biofuel also has its sights set on acquiring de-packaging equipment. This half-a-million-dollar investment will allow extraction of residual FOG and compostable materials from all kinds of containers, such as salad dressing bottles, plastic soy sauce packets, and dozens of others.

“This can handle wet as well as dry product,” BioJoe says. The FOG can be cleaned and sold into the biofuels markets, the dry material can be composted, and the plastic packaging can be recycled. “It’s a huge opportunity,” he says. READ MORE