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Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.....
If you want ON or OFF the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me.....
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days.....
Posted on 06/02/2008 1:04:48 PM PDT by thackney
Texas expanded its lead as the biggest producer of biodiesel fuel in the U.S. with the opening today of the nation's largest biodiesel refinery at the Houston Ship Channel.
The facility, owned by Grapevine-based GreenHunter Energy, will have capacity to produce 105 million gallons a year of the fuel, which is touted as a way to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
But the refinery may be more notable for its ability to make biodiesel from non-food sources. While most U.S. producers use soybean oil or other vegetable oils to make the fuel — and have been hammered by rising costs of those oils — GreenHunter officials said their plant is "feedstock agnostic." It can make biodiesel just as easily from animal fats as it can from vegetable oils.
"We now have the opportunity to participate in our country's goal of reducing its continued dependence on foreign crude oil supplies," said GreenHunter chairman and CEO Gary C. Evans.
At the Houston Ship Channel, GreenHunter's renewable fuels campus also includes a 700,000-barrel bulk liquid terminal operation, a 200 million-pound per year glycerin distillation system and a 45,000 barrel-per-month methanol distillation tower.
Company officials said the other businesses will help offset down cycles in the biodiesel business, which has struggled to get off the ground in the U.S. but is flourishing in Europe.
The campus was built at a former waste oil and chemical plant site, and in a grand opening ceremony today was held up as a symbol of the nation's energy future.
"In the same way that Texas set the pace in petroleum production and refining, we are now leading the way into a new era of renewable energy production which will move us closer to independence from foreign oil," said Gov. Rick Perry in a speech.
When blended at low levels with petroleum-based diesel, biodiesel has been shown to reduce some harmful tailpipe emissions. Such blends can be run in standard diesel engines with little or no modification.
The U.S. biodiesel industry is currently equipped with more than 2 billion gallons of installed production capacity from 171 plants across 40 states, according to the National Biodiesel Board, an industry trade group.
In 2007, U.S. biodiesel production hit the 500 million gallon mark, displacing 20 million barrels of petroleum imports, according to the board.
But though biodiesel is heavily subsidized, it still accounts for a tiny percentage of the diesel fuel consumed in the U.S. Ethanol, a gasoline additive made mostly from corn in the U.S., has made deeper inroads.
President Bush, however, is hoping to change that in coming years by steering money toward biofuel research. New legislation, signed by Bush in December, also calls for a five-fold increase in U.S. biofuel output to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.
Ping
105 million gallons per day = 6,849 BPD
105 million gallons per day sounds like so much more though....
per year, not per day
They made it sound as big as they could.
Houston PING
I know you meant “year”....the 105 MM figure impressed me at first....6850 BPD ain’t all that much.
Still, I applaud any such measures. What I do NOT applaud is the idea that these small amounts can make any meaningful dent in our overall demand.
Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.....
If you want ON or OFF the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me.....
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days.....
It’s about freaking time they stop using our FOOD!!!!
It’s time to halt the IDIOTIC CORN ETHANOL based fuel program. It may be popular with agribusiness legislators and their CONTRIBUTOR pals BUT it is a NET ENERGY LOSER (more units IN than come OUT – DUUUHHHHH!) This goofy program is – along with the oil situation – killing Americans on food prices but ACTUALLY killing FOLKS in other parts of the world. And THAT’S not only STUPID — it’s IMMORAL.
“We now have the opportunity to participate in our country’s goal of reducing its continued dependence on foreign crude oil supplies,” said GreenHunter chairman and CEO Gary C. Evans.
I hope I see the day when the large river of money flowing from the US into the M.E. is but a small trickle.
“105 million gallons per day = 6,849 BPD”
How big are the barrels in your world?
Sorry, that should have read 105 million gallons per year like the article.
Unless my math is faulty, it's about 1% of our annual gasoline usage in the US, from one biofuel plant. Assuming there is sufficient available feedstock, opening ten or twenty more, scattered around the country to be near the feedstock source(s), you'd be looking at a meaningful dent.
or.............we could build 20 nuke plants and 20 FT (coal to diesel) plants, stop subsidizing bio-fuels and at least pretend we are serious about energy independence.
ethanol is not the answer
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Build nuclear power plants, coal fired power plants, coal-to-fuel “Fischer-Tropsch” method plants, fuel plants based upon animal waste, whatever is going to work. Every little bit helps. There’s a tremendous amount of energy in tidal movement, but I am not aware of any viable, large scale way to capitalize upon it.
The article says they're using animal fats.
This little plant only produces 105 million gallons per year. That is nothing in contrast to total consumption. We lose that much fuel in a year in the US from evaporation due to faulty gas caps.
The US consumes roughly 400 million gallons of fuel per day. Your math is probably alright, but your data might be off a click. In other words, this plant in 4 years will produce (at full capacity) what Americans consume in one day.
On that we agree.
OK. I went back and read this again. The plant produces biodiesel, not ethanol or anything that can be used in gasoline engines. My numbers weren’t just off, they were irrelevant. I’m not certain what the monthly diesel usage figures are, for the US.
How about wave power pushing and pulling on something constantly...
BioDiesel would be great for heating oil use or trucks.
Diesel is lumped in with all distillates, mostly heating fuel and diesel. Road use diesel is special in that it has too be Ultra-Low Sulfur.
We use a between 4 to 4.5 million barrels per day.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_a_epd0_vpp_mbblpd_4.htm
Wow, I didn’t know a barrel contains 16,181 gallons
It does when you confuse days and years like I did.
It only takes legislation from a enviro-nazi congress before they can start harvesting bio fuel material from cemeteries.
Another reason for every community to have it's own Bartertown!
Can't you just see it? Post-mortem liposuction - sold as an "extra" by the funeral homes. "Gee, Dad looks great! He always did want to lose weight..."
I'm sure that Soylent Biofuel Industries will be the dominant purchaser of said "animal fat".
“Post-mortem liposuction “
The South will become an energy giant!
My understanding is that US oil consumption is 21 MM barrels PER DAY, of which about 6 MM is currently domestically produced.
21 MM bbl x 42 = 882 MM gals per day x 365 days =
321,930 billion gals per year,
3.22 * 10E^11 divided by
1.05 * 10E^8 gals per year.
Sounds like we would need about 3067 of these plants.
Obviously, the amount of crude oil we use is split up between gas, oil, tar, misc chemicals, etc, and we don’t get 42 gals of gas (or any other single product) out of a barrel of crude oil...point being, 6950 bbl a day is utterly miniscule. But, as I said, I applaud the effort, and if it’s a viable business that isn’t subsidized and actually makes enough money to run itself and maintain itself, I am absolutely thrilled for them! Overall, though, it ain’t spit!
It still uses agricultural products and to be made in sufficient quantity to actually make an energy difference it must come to compete for agricultural land and against food crops.
All we want is life beyond Thunderdome. :)
If they can use mostly waste products, that would help.
Where do they get these animal fats? Is there a clearing house for lard and tallow?
Be the first, start your own exchange and woo the speculators to your doorstep.
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