Dynoil to Build 1.5 bgy (billion gallon/yr) Biodiesel Refinery in Houston

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/home

(scroll down to latest news)

To help lessen the U.S. dependency on foreign oil, Dynoil's commitment to producing an alternative diesel fuel is under way with its plan to build a 1.5 billion gallon per year (bgy) refinery that will process vegetable oil feedstock into environmentally friendly biodiesel. The intention was announced by A. Vernon Wright, Chief Executive Officer of Dynoil LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company.

A site for the refinery has been selected near Houston, Texas, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. The plant will process conventional vegetable oil into biodiesel fuel that will contain zero sulphur and nearly zero nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. Dynoil's biodiesel can be blended into various grades of diesel fuel that can contain anywhere from five percent (B5) to 20 percent (B20) biodiesel to meet market demand requirements.

The refinery will process approximately 100,000 barrels per day of vegetable oil into fuel that can be used as a blending stock with petroleum diesel. The company plans to use state-of-the-art technology to convert vegetable oil into consumable fuel oil. Biodiesel can also be used for home heating or electric power generation.

The company concluded from its market studies that the current market for biodiesel in the U.S. Gulf Coast is at least 100,000 barrels per day, and it identified markets on the U.S. East and West Coasts and on the Great Lakes where Dynoil will expand biodiesel production.

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[DUHandle]

1. Not so good, I’m starting to think

Dynoil is a player in petroleum business, and it looks like they are planning to purchase Unocal


This looks to me like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

[phantom power]

2. On the other hand...

Oil companies are exactly the companies with the experience and resources for building refineries. They must be at the top of a rather short list when it comes to that kind of capability.

Also, if the fox is producing carbon-neutral fuel in the hen-house, I can't work up too much outrage over that.

[phantom power]

3. I note with interest that Houston is a coastal city in Hurricane Alley

Which, in fact, tangled with Rita last year. And took some refinery damage.

Paging Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin to the courtesy phone...

[kestrel91316]

4. Trust me, you would prefer environmental spillage of vegetable oil

and biodiesel any day of the week over PETROLEUM. Much less toxic, and quite biodegradable.

[phantom power]

5. I was thinking more along the lines of...

not building any more of our energy infrastructure in the path of cat-5 storms.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. But Dr Gray said last year was just a fluke...

...so it must be safe. :)

[phantom power]

7. Yes, I'm sure everything is under control...

:hide:

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Dr. Gray is very conservative

Scientifically, that is. I have no idea what his politics are.

But scientists are under tremendous pressure these days. It's become such a cutthroat subculture that scientists these days do a lot of CYA, like Gray is doing.

Any time I hear a scientist larding his or her talks with buzzwords like "peer review" and some of the common CSICOP jargon ("extraordinary evidence", "Occam's Razor", gratuitous gags about ESP and aliens, etc.), I just assume that s/he is involved in multiple fights for tenure, funding, and publication rights. Optimism on any count has become grounds for dismissal, ridicule, and de-facto defrocking, even for a "Graybeard".

--p!

[kestrel91316]

13. Well, you DO have a point there!

[Dogmudgeon]

15. The good news and the bad news

The good news is that petroleum is, in fact, biodegradable.

The bad news is that it takes months for the biodegradation process to start working, and a couple of years for all the material to be reclaimed. Composting, TDP, and seeding with oil-eating bacteria can speed the process tremendously, but none of these are yet suited for bioremediation. The bacterial method is most promising, but the work put into microbial methods has been miserly.

But there's more potentially bad news -- biodiesel is not vegetable oil. It is esterified vegetable oil. I am not aware that any major studies have been done on its toxicity, though I'd recommend that people not try frying hash browns in it. But it's got to be easier on the local ecology than petroleum.

--p!

[NNadir]

8. As of Feb-06, the US was importing 7,621,000 barrels of oil per day.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

This plant will produce, if it operates at 100% capacity, almost 100,000 barrels per day.

I like biodiesel. I think it's great stuff, particularly if produced from algae, but it always important to keep a sense of scale. This plant will produce 0.0012% of US oil imports.

I'm sure that many people will wax romantic about this great triumph in the field of renewable energy. According to Wikipedia, to produce enough biodiesel via soybean crops to meet US diesel (and number 2 heating oil) demand, twice the surface area of the United States (and presumably all of its water) would be required. The situation is somewhat better with rapeseed (which is used in Europe).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

Algae, though, although it requires huge amounts of water and presumably energy for processing, is much better.

I like biodiesel for the future, though. I'm glad this plant is going up. (I have a friend who makes commercial biodiesel down that way, I'll have to ask him about the scuttlebutt on this plant.) I note that my favorite fuel, DME, has a drawback inasmuch as it has poor lubricity. The admixture of biodiesel could certainly help with this problem.

[jpak]

10. You need to read that wikipedia article again...

"The estimated transportation fuel and home heating oil used in the United States is about 230,000 million US gallons (0.87 km³) (Briggs, 2004)."

That's ALL transportation fuels plus heating oil - not just diesel...

[NNadir]

12. I stand corrected. Whatever. Biodiesel can provide a tiny fraction

of US oil demand in any case. The biodiesel fuel can slow the rate of oil imports, maybe, but it cannot eliminate them, since it would require more than the entire surface area of the United States. (I have no doubt, however, that renewable advocates would be willing to try this - they don't generally give a shit about trashing any, ecosystem from rain forest to canyons, to farm land, to waterways, even vast stretches of the Gulf of Mexico to serve their god.)

In fact, US diesel fuel demand is expected this summer to be 3.2 million barrels per day.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html

Thus about half of US imports of oil can roughly be accounted for by diesel fuel.

The fact remains: One cannot add diesel cars and expect to fuel them with biodiesel. One cannot fuel the existing diesel engines with biodiesel alone.

I think though, that the fuel is very useful. I note that in Europe B5 is widely used. We should emulate that here to the extent that we can, although we do have something to fear in this dustbowl business that may be coming.

As always, the "world's biggest" hoopla is an evocation of something that when viewed on scale is tiny and nearly insignificant. It helps, but not much.

[JohnWxy]

9. Great news! This company is doing something that will decease imports

of foreign oil. That's a good thing.

They are building this plant without major funding from the Government??..wow!

Obviously, they are not following the nuclear industry's business model. LOL.

[Dead_Parrot]

11. Bonus question: Why Houston?

Hurricanes aside, wouldn't you want this to be central to the growing area? This isn't central to the US corn belt. or the US itself, or even TX: This way you have to haul all your crops down to Houston for processing, then ship the finished juice back up.

Unless you're planning on shipping stuff via sea, that is. Like imported palm oil from a freshly bulldozed rainforest, for example.

Anyone else troubled by this?

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Edit: Any Ideas?