Florida Biodiesel Plant to Be Largest in US to Date
16 February 2007
Agri-Source Fuels is converting a former citrus juice factory in Dade City, Florida, to a biodiesel plant with an annual capacity of more than 125 million gallons. That capacity would make it the largest biodiesel producer in the US. The company hopes to begin production soon.
The plant will use chicken fat hauled in from Georgia and Alabama and palm and cottonseed oils shipped from South America as the feedstock, according to a report in the St. Petersburg Times.
The plant will be the second biodiesel plant in the Tampa Bay area. Lakeland’s World Energy Alternatives plant produced 12 million gallons last year.
(A hat-tip to The Fueling Station!)
The chicken fat sure won't travel by pipeline. I wonder what the EROI is after the semi's fuel consumption?
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 16 February 2007 at 08:17 PM
^ Well where do you suppose it's going now? I doubt it's going that far, but it might be hauled a fair bit already. I wonder: is chicken fat a waste stream or a revenue stream? Does the chicken fat "creator" have to pay the biodiesel folks to dispose, or does the biodiesel factory have to buy the fat? If the former, it might be a close-to-free feedstock.
Also, where is the finished biodiesel going? If it's going to stay in Tampa area, then the EROI for the chicken fat isn't such a slap in the face. If the biodiesel is headed back northward though, then this plant runs the risk of another plant being built nearer Tallahassee, where it could get the fat for lower transportation costs...
Posted by: stomv | 17 February 2007 at 05:52 AM
Rendering plants take fats and convert them to products like animal feed, so I doubt that the fat was going to waste before. Even CWT's turkey-waste feedstock has an alternate market as a feed supplement; this is one reason their economics didn't work out (Federal regulations related to "mad cow" didn't restrict the use of animal parts as they thought would happen).
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 17 February 2007 at 07:28 AM
I'm sure the plant has rail service. I can envision something like semi's coming in with the raw materials, trains being loaded with the final product, then transported to a large refiner directly by rail for mixing or to Tampa's port (or Port Canaveral, etc) to be put on a tanker and floated to some large refinery elsewhere located at a port like those in Houston.
Posted by: EJ | 17 February 2007 at 05:03 PM
When and where is biodiesel available in florida? DAle
Posted by: Dale Moody | 15 January 2008 at 07:59 AM