Biodiesel flows in Richmond, VA
by Greg Edwards, Times-Dispatch Staff Writer / May 26, 2007
Source: DailyProgress.com
Abiodiesel refinery is operating in a century-old building in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom. Reco Biodiesel LLC made its first 8,000-gallon batch of biodiesel in November. It has supplied the soybean-based fuel to companies that blend it with petroleum diesel fuel for sale to public and governmental customers. Virginia has four commercial biodiesel refineries, all hoping that the regional market for the environmentally friendly fuel will grow. More refineries are coming, reportedly in places such as Charlottesville, the Eastern Shore and Tidewater. A California company, SE-Energy, announced this week that it plans to build a large plant on the Hampton Roads waterfront to produce biodiesel.
Besides being less harmful to the atmosphere when it is burned in a diesel engine, biodiesel provides other societal benefits, said Reco Chairman Robert C. Courain Jr. “It helps the farmer because we use soybean oil as our feedstock and helps the country because it . . . doesn’t come from offshore.”
Biodiesel is not a revolutionary idea. A version of Frenchman Rudolf Diesel’s engine was fueled by peanut oil at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. The fuel is produced through a reaction of vegetable oil, old cooking oil or animal fat with methyl alcohol in the presence of a catalyst. The resulting biodiesel, a chemical chain of fatty acids and alcohol, is then treated and filtered to prevent excessive soap formation and to remove water and solids, according to a Virginia Cooperative Extension Service report.
The energy content per gallon of biodiesel is nearly as high as that of petroleum-based diesel fuel — 118,296 British thermal units per gallon, compared with 129,500 Btu. With the exception of nitrogen oxide, pure biodiesel contains up to one-half fewer air pollutants than petroleum diesel and virtually no sulfur. The biodiesel produced at the Reco plant has a rich golden color. The aroma is more like that of cooking oil than petroleum diesel.
The manufacturing process involves about six steps and yields biodiesel and glycerin, a chemical used in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic manufacturing. Reco is seeking markets for the glycerin byproduct. The managers at Reco decided two years ago to build a biodiesel refinery at the company’s Hospital Street building. It decided to do the work itself rather than hire a contractor. “It took us longer than we thought to get here,” Courain said. “We actually thought by summertime last year we would have been in production,” he said.
Reco has had to fine-tune the plant to ensure its production meets national standards for biodiesel headed to the blended-fuel market. Vehicles can operate on 100 percent biodiesel, but typically it is blended with petroleum diesel in quantities of 2 percent or 20 percent biodiesel, known as B2 and B20. “We’ve made it, we’ve sold it and we’re in the process of trying to find more and more customers and selling them on the benefits of the product,” Courain said. The plant could be profitable by year’s end, he said.
A trade group, the National Biodiesel Board, says biodiesel fuel production increased from 75 million gallons in 2005 to 250 million gallons in 2006. The fuel is available at about 1,000 filling stations nationwide and, according to an Energy Department Web site, at nine public stations and nine government stations within 100 miles of Richmond.
Blacksburg, Roanoke, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are using biodiesel in their vehicles and power equipment. Rebecca White, director of parking and transportation at U.Va., said the university has run its 30-bus fleet on a 20 percent biodiesel blend since October 2005. White says she uses biodiesel in her own vehicle. “It reduces emissions and doesn’t smell as bad,” she said.
Reco’s refinery is in one huge room of a much larger building that once housed the Richmond factory of the American Locomotive Co., a builder of steam trains. The Richmond plant built 4,500 locomotives before it closed in 1927 after 41 years of operation.
Richmond Engineering Co., now Reco, has been in Shockoe Bottom since the 1930s. The company operates several businesses. It fabricates steel tanks at a plant in Columbia, S.C., and operates a business that builds large storage tanks. At the Shockoe Bottom location, Reco Biotechnology Inc. uses microbes to treat and clean soil and water polluted with nonhazardous chemical wastes.
Because Reco does environmental or “green” work, it is always on the lookout for environmentally friendly opportunities, said Reco Biodiesel President Michael D. Schleinkofer. A biodiesel maker has to stay in touch with soybean and petroleum prices daily, Schleinkofer said. Compared with Reco’s other businesses, many parts of the biodiesel businesses were outside Reco’s control, Courain said. “It was a real eye-opener,” he said. “In some cases it’s been a rude awakening.”
Reco buys soybean oil from a Perdue Farms mill in Chesapeake. Perdue buys soybeans from farmers in Virginia and surrounding states. David Taliaferro of Montague Farms in Essex County said his family operation culls soybeans that are too large and too small for the food market and sends them to the Perdue plant. Demand for soybean oil for biodiesel translates into a higher prices for farmers, Taliaferro said. “Farmers,” he said, “are always looking for higher prices.”
Taliaferro said his farm uses biodiesel in its trucks and farm equipment and it has never caused performance problems. Other biodiesel producers in the state are Virginia Biodiesel Refinery in West Point, Chesapeake Custom Chemical in Henry County and Renroh Environmental Co. in South Boston.
Biodiesel fuel is likely to become much more common, particularly with the advent of government-mandated, ultra-low-sulfur petroleum diesel fuel. Removing air-polluting sulfur from the fuel reduces the lubrication properties that benefit engine operation, but adding biodiesel to petroleum diesel restores the fuel’s slickness.
First Energy’s pipeline terminal in Richmond has bought biodiesel from Reco. It is the first Richmond-area terminal to install equipment for mixing petroleum diesel and biodiesel in 5, 10 and 20 percent formulations at the wholesale rack. The equipment should be online by July 1, manager Jimmy Brown said. From Reco’s Richmond location, it is ideally suited to supply biodiesel to many areas of Virginia, Schleinkofer said.