AIChE East
Nu-Energie Biodiesel
Plant
Brian Hullette is the CEO and entrepreneur of a biodiesel company near
Mark Yonts, the Plant Manager, showed us around. The plant currently uses purchased soybean
oil, methanol, and catalyst to make biodiesel and
glycerin. Unlike many biodiesel plants, this one is highly automated, well
instrumented, and uses analytical testing at every step to assure high quality
fuel is produced. The plant also adds
Eastman “Bioextend” antioxidant to extend the useful
life of the fuel beyond six months in storage.
The
current facility was built in 2007 at a total cost of around $4 million and has
a capacity of 5 million gallons / year of biodiesel. Much of the construction and engineering was
performed by the Nu-Energie staff, so that the
capital required was much lower than the $7 million the facility would have
cost if all were outsourced. However,
the building layout has space for two more operating lines to bring the total
capacity to 15 million gallons / year in the future. In addition, Nu-Energie
is currently constructing a feed treatment system to handle used cooking oil as
a feed. They have contracts for use
cooking oil and expect to produce biodiesel from it
later this year. Loading and unloading
is currently into tank trucks, but the
Luke
Stewart, 2008 Vice-Chair, arranged the plant tour. Thank you, Luke.
To the
right of the main building below is the tank farm, which contains large tanks
for oil, methanol, recycled methanol, and biodiesel
product. The glycerin product tanks are
located inside the building. A truck
loading/unloading station is located behind the building.
The
founder and CEO, Brian Hullette, has used connections
with many institutions and government to build his business from scratch. An emphasis on quality and technical excellence
sets Nu-Energie apart. Eastman Chemical Company is a big customer
and currently buys 650,000 gallons of biodiesel from Nu-Energie.
The plant
is highly automated and requires only one operator to achieve extraordinary
productivity.
Below,
Plant Manager Mark Yonts showed us the new cooking
oil pretreatment process under construction.
The used cooking oil will be heated and centrifuged to remove water.
Shown
below is the sodium methoxide catalyst tank
(foreground) and reactor (background).
After
reaction, the product is centrifuged to remove glycerin, and the excess
methanol is evaporated and recycled. The
methanol evaporators are heat-integrated using plate and frame heat exchangers.
The biodiesel is purified further by using ion exchange beds
with Purolite 201 to adsorb more glycerin. The adsorbed is periodically regenerated by
washing with fresh methanol (which is recycled). The ion exchange beds are in the columns
shown below.
Finally,
the biodiesel flows into the product tank
(below). Eastman BioExtend
antioxidant is added to the product before it is pumped to the large lot tanks
outside.
Afterwards,
we retired to Fatz Café in