Alternative Fuels

Louisiana refinery to turn fat, grease into renewable diesel

By Angelle Bergeron

A $138 million refinery under construction in Geismar, La., will, by early 2010, be on its way to converting low-grade, inedible fats and greases into renewable synthetic diesel, jet and military fuel.

Although its primary ingredient will be chicken fat, the fuel made at Dynamic Fuels LLC won’t look at all like the thick, dark gumbos for which the region is famous. Nor will it look like its petroleum-based counterparts that are being cooked up at refineries throughout south Louisiana.

“It looks like water. It is absolutely clear,” says Jeff Bigger, chair of the management committee for the Dynamic Fuels joint venture, which is a partnership of Syntroleum of Tulsa, Okla., and Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale, Ark. “It contains no sulphur, none of the petroleum compounds that make it smell bad, and it is ultraclean.”

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Syntroleum and Tyson formed the joint venture in mid-2007 to construct and operate the first plant of this kind in North America.

“There is one other plant in the world that does something similar to this and that is in Finland,” Bigger says. Syntroleum has invested $300 million in the development of its proprietary synthetic fuels technology, which converts FOG – the lowest grade of fats, oils and greases – into a renewable fuel source.

Syntroleum brings to the joint venture the engineering and operating experience to process the material. Tyson, the largest worldwide producer of protein and animal fats, brings the necessary feedstock.

“We are taking material that is so acidic you can’t even feed it to animals,” Bigger says. “This is bottom of the barrel in terms of greases. They’re paying people to haul it away, and now we will convert it into the best fuel on the planet.”

The synthetic fuel produced at Dynamic will offer performance and environmental advantages over petroleum-based fuels, Bigger adds. The fuel’s higher cetane levels afford it greater thermal stability, making it effective for advanced military applications.

“We can make jet fuel, but since jet fuel from renewable feed stock has not yet been certified by the FAA, we will primarily make diesel fuel,” Bigger says.

The joint venture broke ground in October on a 23-acre site that was formerly part of the existing Lion Copolymer plant. The site was Lion Copolymer’s thiazole (rubber curing additive) operation that was shut down in 2007, says Lynn Tomlinson, director of project engineering for Syntroleum.

The new refinery will make use of five onsite buildings for storage, office space and control rooms, and about 1,200 lin ft of existing pipe rack.

“That’s part of what attracted us to this site, the existing infrastructure,” Tomlinson says. “We looked at 45 sites in six states and decided Geismar was the best for feedstock delivery, hydrogen and the best infrastructure.” Infrastructure includes rail and access to two highways, including Interstate 10 only 5 mi away.

“We looked at being near water, although we aren’t going to use that at first,” Tomlinson adds.

The feedstock will come from all over the United States and be delivered to the plant via rail or truck. “It’s a four-step process where we treat the feedstock and move it into a processing area where it will be converted to a paraffin product,” Tomlinson says. “We heat it up, mix it with hydrogen and run it through Syntroleum’s proprietary catalyst, converting it to diesel. Then we fractionate (separate into different parts) and store it.”
By late January, not a lot of construction activity was evident at the Geismar site. About 95% of the demolition, which consisted of removing old pipe and equipment, was complete.

L-Con Engineers and Constructors of Houston, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor, was onsite. Crews were busy finishing interiors of some of the buildings, repairing exterior panels knocked off by the winds of Hurricane Gustav last September and pouring ring walls that will be the foundations for the plant’s vessels.

Instrumentation will be provided by Maverick Technologies of Columbia, Ill., and electrical by Meitec Corp. of Nagoya, Japan.

“We plan to keep a 100,000-gallon tank from the old plant and use it for feedstock and two 50,000-gallon tanks for wastewater,” Tomlinson says. Construction will take most of 2009 and likely peak in August, Tomlinson says.

Alloy stainless steel welders and other trades needed for the project won’t be hard to find in the River Parishes, where so many refineries are located, he adds. And because the global economic crisis is causing other projects to slow down or stop, Tomlinson doesn’t foresee having any difficulty finding a sufficient workforce to construct or operate the facility.

Almost a dozen vessels will be placed onsite, but none of spectacular size. “It’s just like a petroleum refinery but smaller because of less flow,” Tomlinson says. “We will have compressors, membrane units, the same sort of things you see in a hydro processing unit, but our biggest lift will be 120 tons, compared to (adjacent) Rubicon LLC, which had a 650-ton lift recently.”

Whereas 90,000 barrels a day is typical for petroleum refineries, Dynamic will only produce 5,000 barrels a day, or 75 million gallons a year, Tomlinson says. “That’s world scale on a biodiesel level, but it’s nothing next to petroleum.”

What is unique is the process. “Renewable is the greenest you can be,” says Tomlinson, who led the team that developed the process.

Dynamic is already shopping for a location to construct another refinery.

“We’re planning to build several plants with Tyson,” Bigger says. “This stuff (animal fat waste) is going into landfills. There is at least enough waste fat out there for several plants. Our ultimate aim is to eventually bring in garbage and gasify that, but those plants are much more expensive and years away.”