The best answer begins with feedstocks because they determine how far and how fast one can adapt to changing market conditions. Feedstock prices typically represent approximately 85 percent of the price of biodiesel. Never assume that the present choice of feedstock will be available, acceptable or within a reasonable price range when needed.
Take the case of palm oil. Many countries are now considering legislation to ban palm-based biodiesel because of the food-or-fuel campaign being so relentlessly pursued in the “civilized” world. For example, in the United States few question the food-versus-fuel argument when it comes to soy oil, and soy is so much more useful than palm since it serves as the basis for so many other products, contains one-half to one-third of the oil compared to palm, and is healthier. As a biodiesel producer, be aware that ecologists in some parts of the world are not in favor of using existing plant and animal life for transportation purposes.
On the other hand, a small country like Liberia could be completely energy independent using only locally available palm oil, a cold crushing facility and a medium-sized biodiesel plant. Fully 80 percent of their potential production is overgrown through neglect, wars and disease, but what remains could power generators, trucks and buses and revive the economy, replacing $18 per gallon fuel with $1.45 biodiesel.
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Feedstock Flexibility, Pricing
Predicting new feedstocks is an arcane science. Jatropha came out of nowhere, and there is much talk of camelina and algae. Will the new processors be able to handle these newer oils? Will animal fats be cheaper? How will they be prepared for production? A multi-feedstock processor is recommended because as long as the chosen feedstock meets the basic chemical composition criteria, one can probably make biodiesel out of it without too many constraints. Be aware, however, that a “small” change can hide a lot of rework, so if the processor is flexible then the programming can adapt the catalyst, feedstock and methanol equation quite easily to meet immediate requirements. If not, plan to spend quality time with a plant designer.
Even the new oils may come with a high price on the learning curve. Jatropha is not the easy conversion it was thought to be and we are hearing stories from places such as Mozambique and Peru that the oil itself needs careful monitoring, let alone harvesting and crushing. It may be cheap, but there may be a reason for that. Algae oil is slowly appearing in experimental reactors and ponds, but the jury is still out on the ideal mono-cell, the way to harvest the oil and how to create a sustainable economic model for the colorful scum.
Lowering the feedstock price is an essential tactic for new installation, and one way to do that is to blend different oils so that the free fatty acids and other levels are within acceptable transesterification limits. Not all units can handle blends, and some blends, such as chicken fat and soy, or coconut and palm, can be exotic. These are actual requests that Euro Marketing Tools has fielded from places such as Fiji and Liberia, areas where mistakes will be hard to correct and changes impossible to implement. The term blending does not mean mixing the various oils as they head into the processor. It means a homogeneous blending of all the components so that the output does not contain pockets of one or the other feedstock. That blending comes with a price. Blending requires a centrifuge or two ahead of the processing plant.
As far as exotic oils and strange blends go, wise plant manufacturers will protect themselves in one of two ways. The first is to test run the plant for final delivery on its approved oil, most often virgin soy, and provide the buyer with the keys to the plant only after it has run on that oil and produced ASTM or EN standard fuel for a specific number of hours. The second is to request a sample of the oil that will be run in the plant and have enough adjustments built into the system to allow for other oils to be used. Always get the second option because there are many ways that the future of the facility will hinge on the ready acceptance of alternate feedstocks. Again, most of the plants built over the past four years are probably running on a different feedstock than originally planned, and high on that list are waste vegetable oil and animal fats.
Feedstock flexibility and availability are not the only considerations; there are volume considerations. The facility is expected to run continuously at near capacity, but what if there are climactic considerations, availability issues, local ordinances and other reasons to slow down production? What if, as happened recently in a facility in France, for religious reasons a 100,000-ton-per-year unit was not allowed to blend non-kosher animal fats because the glycerin offtake would be unsellable in Africa? That is where the ability to run portions of the plant is an essential consideration. The modern modular facilities have multiple production lines. This has two advantages. The first was just discussed, and the second is that there can be no single-source failures leading to a complete system shutdown with the attendant horrors of an idle plant while the single large processor is repaired.
Continuous production on multiple lines can be slowed or even stopped on two of the lines for whatever reason, and startups are simpler because the facilities can be brought on line sequentially. Each line can be tailored to perform specific tasks to meet clear goals. One can be highly productive for glycerin offtakes, the others strictly for ASTM biodiesel.
Robert Luiten, chief executive officer of Zenergy International Inc., started his operation with a clear idea of what biodiesel and the energy world would entail. “We decided right from the start that every one of our facilities would enable flexibility and ability to act on opportunities to ensure profitability at all times,” he says. “We will be opening world-scale facilities in France, Malaysia, both sides of the United States, South America and possibly Africa with a clear understanding that all our facilities will have an underlying mission of allowing any feedstock at any time and without national limits. Each facility will be ecologically clean, have a small footprint, be standardized across the globe, allow for expansion to meet specific needs and will be logistically optimized. There is no other way to meet the challenges coming at us in the biodiesel market.”
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