NLR firms form biodiesel alliance
Posted on Friday, December 14, 2007
Two North Little Rock companies with decades of petroleum-industry experience have joined hands to help take the kinks out of biodiesel distribution.
Hall Tank Co. and The Southern Co. of NLR Inc. have designed a turnkey system for dispensing biodiesel blends.
“We’ve done the research and engineering, so all our customers have to do is make a selection from a catalog,” said Robert Hall Jr., president of Hall Tank Co., a steel-tank fabricator.
Prospective customers include oil jobbers, farm cooperatives, even groups of neighboring farmers, said Jeff Marvin, vice president of sales for The Southern Co., which installs petroleum equipment.
“Hall and Southern saw an infrastructure need, and they’ve addressed it,” said Tommy Foltz, executive director of the Arkansas Clean Transportation Partnership, a public-private effort to promote alternatives to gasoline and petroleum diesel.
“This is a unique system,” Foltz said. “They’re ahead of the pack.”
Arkansas has two biodiesel producers, but only 59 retail fuel outlets in 28 of the state’s 75 counties sell biodiesel blends, according to Arkansas Farm Bureau, which tracks biofuel availability. Retail fuel outlets statewide number about 2, 300, of which 1, 200 sell diesel fuel, according to the Arkansas Bureau of Standards.
The Hall and Southern system, known as “Easy Tank,” should facilitate the distribution and sale of biodiesel fuel in Arkansas and elsewhere in the United States, Foltz said. The skid-mounted, double-wall, above-ground Easy Tank, which costs about $ 50, 000, also meshes well with the Arkansas Agriculture Department’s recently announced incentive program for alternative-fuel distribution, he said.
The development program for alternative fuels provides grants of up to $ 50, 000 to firms investing in facilities or equipment to improve the distribution of alternative fuels within the state. Because Easy Tanks can be heated and insulated, the equipment specifically meets one of the key grant-selection criteria: the ability to provide “continuous supplies of alternative fuels throughout the year.”
“The biodiesel industry is in its infancy, and Easy Tank fills a distribution void,” Foltz said.
Hall Tank, established in 1952, manufactures a wide range of steel tanks that can hold up to 50, 000 gallons. The company markets its products from Florida to California and already has sold a number of storage tanks to biodiesel plants across the U. S., Hall said.
The Southern Co. has been marketing turnkey fuel dispensing systems similar to Easy Tank for a number of years in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, Marvin said. A 12, 000-gallon, aviation-fuel tank, destined for the Paragould airport, was sitting at Hall Tank on Thursday waiting for Southern to install the pumping and card-swiping equipment.
The customized design for biodiesel use makes Easy Tank special, Marvin said. For example, stainless steel fittings instead of the more common brass fittings are used because brass can accelerate the oxidation of biodiesel, he said. Easy Tank also comes fitted with filters specially designed for biodiesel.
Hall, a biodiesel advocate for years, voiced his eagerness to see the industry prosper to help reduce U. S. dependence on petroleum imports, to create jobs domestically and to cut carbon-dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
“This is a country of inventors,” Hall said. “Our farmers, scientists and distributors will figure out how to make biodiesel work.”
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