Biodiesel plant planned in North Dakota

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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From Altamont Press:

Biodiesel plant planned in North Dakota

Archer Daniels Midland Co. says it has chosen Velva, a McHenry County town of about 1,000, for its first wholly owned U.S. biodiesel plant. It is the second biodiesel plant announced in North Dakota this year.

The Velva plant will be next to a canola crushing facility owned by Decatur, IL-based ADM, one of the world’s largest agricultural processing companies.

ADM said the plant will produce 50 million gallons of the vegetable-based fuel each year.

Spokeswoman Karla Miller said ADM is not disclosing the cost of the plant, though Gov. John Hoeven said the company plans to invest at least $30 million in building, equipment and labor. Miller said the plant would create jobs but not a large number of them - “maybe a dozen, maybe two dozen.”

Groundbreaking could happen as early as November, though the completion date depends on final engineering and approval of the necessary permits, Miller said.

Hoeven said the plant will use the equivalent of 600,000 acres of canola each year.

In March, a company called North Dakota Biodiesel Inc. announced plans for a biodiesel plant in Minot that is expected to create 45 jobs and begin operating late next year. It will produce 32 million gallons of the fuel each year from about 355,000 acres of North Dakota canola.

North Dakota’s canola crop totaled a little more than 1 million acres this year, said Barry Coleman, executive director of the Northern Canola Growers Association. The state leads the nation in production of the oilseed, with more than 90 percent of the total crop.

“With the explosive potential in the biodiesel market, there could be very good potential for canola as a biodiesel feedstock,” Coleman said. “There could be a very good growth market down the road.”

The Legislature earlier this year passed a number of incentives aimed at attracting biodiesel facilit

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It would be interesting to hear cost figures for biodiesel versus petrodiesel. Anyone out there have any? The increased oilseed demand could be a good thing for farmers, if the economics work.

Saw a gadget suitable for home use on TV a while back that turned used restaurant frying oil into biodiesel. It was a turnkey system, with all the tanks and chemicals included, that was small enough to fit in a garage or small outbuilding. The cost per gallon stated on the show was 70-80 cents per gallon. I’m beginning to consider it.

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The only problem with biodiesel is that according to a recent issue of National Geographic, if the entire population of United States Auto-Owners chose to use it, all but 3% of our nation’s landmass would have to be devoted to farming the raw materials that create it.

I think that instead, we simply have to stop driving so much and stop planning our towns and cities around the automobile. Driving is not going to be as prevalent in the near future. Get used to it.

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Another draw-back, at least in Minn., bio (veggie) fuel sources live and die by the tax dollar. Without it, it is out of business because they are not self-supporting.
Bob

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Biodiesel plants are being planned for just about everywhere, and I can only hope that they never see the light of day. Growing crops specifically to produce transportation fuels is a huge waste of capital, energy, and land use.

The best option for producing transportation fuels from ag and forest lands is to utilize ag/forest residues (left over after harvest of the crop) and convert them to higher chain alcohols. The MixAlco process does just this thing, and the higher chain alcohols that make up the MixAlco blend can be used in both spark ignition and compression ignition engines at up to 15% of the fuel blend. Much preferable to using ethanol in gasoline blends or biodiesel in diesel fuel blends.

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Well, it keeps the politicains busy and the farmers/ADM subsidized. And while their busy with that they’ll leave us alone.

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One of the big problems with biodiesel from restaurant frying oil is that the engine will smell like french fries, and the driver / engineer will be drooling…

Mark in Utah

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Biodiesel is just like wind energy - whitewashing to give the appearance that something is being done about the energy problem. Not until we develop a national transportation policy that relies more on the lower energy consuming methods, such as rail, will the US start to solve the problems.

dd

ps - I just made a cross country trip in a diesel truck - the first in a long time. I noticed that the price of diesel used to be approximately the price of unleaded regular - now it is at least the price of premium!

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The price of diesel is usually above that of gasoline because the EPA mandated that it be reformuated to ultra-low sulphur. This caused the oil refineries to install a ton of new hi-tech equipment to pull out the sulphur. Guess who pays for it?

Right now the refineries are the largest consumer of Hydrogen in the US. It’s used in the sulphur extraction process for diesel.

In my mind we have two ways to reduce our transportation costs:

  1. Reduce our need for transportation. Rebuild our cities so people live close to where they work, and reduce the need for travel. This will force us into more of a community-based life, and less on an urban/city-based life.

  2. Reduce the comfort level and convenience of the transportation systems we have. Cars are more convenient than buses or trains. Geo Metro’s are less comfortable than LeSabres.

The only way to get people to use mass transit and other lower-cost transportation systems is to make the alternative (personal vehicles) either too expensive or too inconvenient (traffic) to consider using. Very few people will use it very long just to “be a good guy”.

Mark in Utah

Mark in Utah

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there is a site between sherwood and hicksville ohio(old B&O track) for an ethonal plant.however the paperwork and/or funding hasnt been completed yet.will keep you posted.
stay safe
Joe

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Awhile back, a magazine put out by John Deere went into the cost a little bit. Biodiesel was actually more expensive, though I believe that was actually due to the lack of production capacity.

The main advantage to using a biodiesel or biodiesel blend is its lubricating qualities. The sulfur in diesel fuel is actually what keeps injection pumps and injectors lubricated, a problem some pump manufacturers found out when refiners started lowering the sulfur content. The same magazine stated above found out that just by adding one percent biodiesel to today’s low sulfur fuel restores over half the lubricating qualities found in high sulfur fuel.

I like the idea of making my own diesel from used cooking oil, making my own for 70 cents a gallon vs. paying 3.15 at the pump. Right now the initial cost is a bit steep, but maybe I’ll take the plunge.

Randy

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…or we could just allow refiners to keep the sulpher in diesel, then you solve both the comparative price increase relative to gasoline, and you keep the lubricity qualities of the fuel. I seriously doubt that previous sulpher levels in diesel have caused much if anything in the way of true (aka quantitative) environmental damage.

If the econazis don’t like it, tough. If not for them we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

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Randy, (Rvos1979)

I dont know if there’s anywhere in the States where you can go on courses to learn how to make bio diesel from cooking oil but in Wales the Cntre for Alternative Technology (www.cat.org.uk) runs such courses.

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Come to Indiana, home of 6 planned ethanol plants (one within sight of my house.) I think they are talking about a bio-diesel plant or two as well. All are still in the planning/permitting stage and I doubt all will get built simply because there isn’t enough of a market for that much ethanol unless we start using E85, a blend of 85% ethanol 15% gasoline. These would be great for the railroads. Lots of loaded covered hoppers in and out (if they can find enough buyers of the leftover distilled grain) and loaded tank cars heading east and south.

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I hope you’re not downwind as the prevailing wind blows- ADM’s ethanol plant here in CR STINKS! In fact, many people here like to take the city’s official motto, “The City of Five Seasons”, and change it to “The City of Five Smells”.

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That is odd. We have lots of ethanol plants around these parts. They smell like someone roasting grain. It’s not unlike the smell of a bakery,except no butter smell.[;)]

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Hmm… OK, maybe they’re making more than ethanol at the local ADM plant here.

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Sulfur is hardly a benign substance. One of the reasons that Powder River Basin coal is in such great demand is because it is low in sulfur content. Sulfur in diesel oil is being reduced for similar reasons. Acid rain is real and the cause is water in the atmosphere reacting with sulfur dioxide being released into the air when the sulfur in the coal, oil or other fuel is burned. If you lived in the neighborhood in which I grew up, you’d be a lot more appreciative of clean air and water.

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Acid rain is a naturally occuring phenomenon. It has always been and always will be. Man’s SOX contributions are so miniscule it did not and does not significantly affect the pH of rain one way or another. The forced reductions in SOX is similar to the new****nic standards or the proposed carbon taxes - such actions measurably do nothing to make the world a better place, but they do make some of the “stuck on stupid” crowd feel good about themselves.

Or to put it another way: How much more pollution is being caused by the increase use in energy necessary to make biodiesel and ethanol over the energy used to crack petroleum or to liquify coal? It’s one thing if you are using a biofuel feedstock that is a waste product or by-product of some other process, but it’s altogether insane to grow crops and/or harvest trees specifically to make biofuels.

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I think these plants are only viable if they are able to sell the feedstock. The idea of ethanol,for what it’s worth,is to find more domestic markets for agriculture,and to cut the use of oil.