Biodiesel plant set for April start
Posted on Friday, January 25, 2008
HELENA-WEST HELENA — Arkansas’ largest biodiesel plant expects to begin production April 1.
Delta American Fuel LLC, just south of Helena-West Helena on the Mississippi River, will be able to produce 40 million gallons of “B 100,” or pure biodiesel, annually, said Bernie Crowley, vice president and general manager of the startup company.
“We started researching the project in late 2005,” Crowley said of the venture, which is being undertaken by Patrick Burks, Crowley’s grandfather, and David Griffin, a Phillips County farmer.
The last two-and-a-half years have been a roller coaster, Crowley said, as the price of soybean oil — the most commonly used raw material for biodiesel production — has skyrocketed. Soybean oil for March delivery on the Chicago Board of Trade reached a record 54. 36 cents a pound on Jan. 14, up 67 percent during the past year due to increased demand for alternative fuels made from oilseeds.
Although Delta American had not planned to do so, it will begin by making biodiesel from animal fat because that remains profitable, Crowley said.
“We’ve got a long way to go before [soybean oil ] is affordable again,” he said.
Arkansas has two other biodiesel facilities. FutureFuel Chemical Co. near Batesville, which began operating in October 2005, can produce 24 million gallons per year; and Patriot BioFuels Inc. in Stuttgart, which started up in April 2006, can produce 3 million gallons per year.
Also scheduled to begin biodiesel production on April 1 is Arkansas SoyEnergy Group LLC, which is building a 7. 5 million gallon plant near DeWitt, General Manager Terry McCullars said.
Nationwide, about 400 million gallons of biodiesel were produced in 2007 and the industry currently consists of 172 plants, according to the National Biodiesel Board.
Delta American is located on a 330-acre river-terminal site that was originally developed in the 1960 s by brothers Jack and Witt Stephens, Little Rock-based investment bankers, and their Arkla Inc. natural gas company to manufacture fertilizer. The fertilizer plant, which changed hands several times and eventually went out of business, was purchased in 1993 by Planters Service and Sales Inc., a fertilizer distribution business that Burks started 45 years ago.
Delta American has reconditioned two storage tanks on the site: a 7 million-gallon tank for soybean or other vegetable oil, and a 1. 7 million-gallon tank for biodiesel. The fuel company will share in the use of Planter Service’s deep-channel barge pier and two railroad spurs.
Delta American’s biodiesel plant was designed by Safer Energy LLC of Mission, Kan. Safer’s parent company, the Acqua International Group of Melbourne, Australia, had valuable wastewater treatment experience and was able to deliver a quality plant, Crowley said. Although most biodiesel plants cost about $ 1 for each gallon of biodiesel that they are able to produce annually, Safer’s 40 million gallon plant is costing just $ 25 million, he said.
Geoff Small, Safer’s executive vice president of engineering, was on site Thursday as about a dozen Delta American millwrights and welders installed equipment from Australia, Indonesia and Thailand.
An unused Planters Service building has been converted into a laboratory, and construction continues on an adjacent boiler facility that will provide steam for the production process, Crowley said. Safer’s reactor can produce 5, 000 gallons of biodiesel per hour, or 120, 000 gallons per day.
Crowley, 30, said he looks forward to a time when Delta American will be able to load biodiesel on “unit trains,” with anywhere from 60 to 120 cars, or on fuel barges, which can hold about 850, 000 gallons each. He also hopes that Delta American will eventually make biodiesel from algae.
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