Biodiesel plant planned in Cashton

www.rivervalleynewspapers.com ^ | 11/13/2006 | STEVE CAHALAN

[Red Badger]

ASHTON, Wis. — A Madison company hopes to begin making biodiesel from soybean oil about April 1 on the far south side of Cashton.

And it hopes to begin producing electricity by late 2007 using synthetic gas made from manure and sawdust at a pyrolysis unit that would be built near the biodiesel plant.

The biodiesel plant in the Cashton Greens Business Park on the west side of Hwy. 27 is expected to have about 15 employees, and the pyrolysis unit will have about 12 employees, said Neil Young, president and CEO of BEST Energies Inc. in Madison.

Cashton Greens, where an Organic Valley distribution center also is being built, is an innovative industrial park that among other things will produce renewable energy.

A Department of Natural Resources hearing is planned for Thursday on proposed construction and operation permits.“It’s our preliminary determination that it’s approvable,” said Michael Ross, air management review engineer with the DNR’s La Crosse office.

Soybean or other trigly-ceride-based oil will be the primary raw material, according to documents available for public inspection at the DNR office. The other major raw materials will be methanol and sodium methoxide.

The proposed plant is expected to meet emission standards, including those for methanol, according to the DNR documents.

Work on the plant will begin as soon as the DNR approves a construction permit, Young said. “We hope to start construction in the next 30 days,” he said. “We’re negotiating with several suppliers” for the soybean oil that would be used initially, Young said.

BEST BioEnergy Park of Cashton, a subsidiary of BEST Energies, will operate the plant and sell the biodiesel to distributors who will blend it with petroleum diesel fuel. Blends of biodiesel and petroleum diesel fuel can be used in most diesel engines.

“Benefits include creating energy from a renewable resource,” Young said of biodiesel. “And there are less carbon emissions” than with petroleum diesel fuel.

Biodiesel is mostly made from soybean oil. But some biodiesel producers use other oilseeds such as canola, or palm oil, animal fats or recycled oils.

Young said his company will have partners in the biodiesel plant, and in the pyrolysis plant. The latter will use a “slow pyrolysis” process with manure and sawdust to create synthesis gas for generating electricity, charcoal and waste heat for re-use in the plant and for other users.

The gas will contain hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide, and will be burned by generators at the site to produce electricity that BEST will sell to power companies.

Young said he hopes construction of the pyrolysis unit will begin by mid-2007, and that the facility will be generating electricity by the third or fourth quarter of 2007.

BEST officials say the pyrolysis project will help solve environmental problems (such as manure) while creating renewable energy.

“They’re trying to make an energy-sustainable community,” Wisconsin Farmers Union President Sue Beitlich of Stoddard, Wis., said of the Cashton projects, which she likes.

Beitlich said Wisconsin Farmers Union worked with a Madison firm to survey Cashton-area farmers last winter and spring on their interest in growing canola or soybeans with a high oil content, for biodiesel production. “There was interest,” she said.

“There’s huge demand for it,” Beitlich said of biodiesel. “It’s to get us away from all petroleum-based fuel.”

Steve Cahalan can be reached at (608) 791-8229 or scahalan@lacrossetribune.com.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will hold a public hearing on proposed construction and operation permits for a planned biodiesel plant on the south side of Cashton, Wis.

WHEN: The hearing will be at 2 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16.

WHERE: It will be held in the Cashton Community Center, 812 Main St. in Cashton.

INFO: Information, including plans and the DNR’s preliminary analysis, are available for public inspection at the DNR office in Room 104 of the state office building at 3550 Mormon Coulee Road in La Crosse, and at the Torkelson Memorial Library at 809 Main St. in Cashton.

[Red Badger]

They expect to make a ton of cash in Cashton, I assume...........Can you make diesel out of CHEESE?........

[Red Badger]

Rest in Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......

Diesel "Ping" List: If you want on or off the DIESEL "KNOCK" LIST just FReepmail me........

This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......

[Fierce Allegiance]

Hopefully all these new biodiesel plants and ethanol plants will allow the US t get rid of the subsidy wherein farmers are paid NOT to produce, in effrt to artificially inflate world grain prices. That program pisses me off.

[Red Badger]

You can make a lot of dough by loafing in corn bread........

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Forgive me for asking a stupid question, but ? in another article here in FR there is also another plant being built in Washington State, the question is ? is it realistic to build these plants in short order ?
I mean ? on a normal highway bridge on a interstate it can take a long time to build.
They can build this plant in 5 months ?

[Red Badger]

Private money can move as fast as it wants to, which is FAST. Government money, ie OUR money, takes forever to build bridges, roads, etc. IF that was a toll bridge built as a private enterprise, it would be up in short order.........

[Dark Skies]

Can you make diesel out of CHEESE?

Cutting it produces methane emission.

[Red Badger]

Methane is a greenhouse gas, so cheese-diesel is out of the question, I suppose........

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Well, I can understand that, but, I meant the actual construction.
I can only take a good guess that construction methods today are much better, and yes, I have seen footers and slabs poured in no time flat.
I guess once they get the footers and slabs poured, the steel won't take long.
But ? what about the machinery ? and all the systems ?
I don't know, I guess I will be a believer if I saw it, but, I doubt it's going to take less than 5 months ( unless it's 24/7 round the clock crews ) to build and have it running in less than 5 months.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

I guess anything with carbon in it theoretically can be made into fuels.

[BigTex5]

The question still remains how much energy it will take to make the biodiesel If it takes 1.5 gallons of normal fuel to make 1 gallon of biodiesel how is that more efficient? Also, I have yet to hear what's its going to do to the environment. We'll be planting entire crops to feed our need for fuel. What will it do so the soil?

[Dark Skies]

Methane is a greenhouse gas

I wonder Al Gore will initiate a campaign to stop men from cutting the cheese.

[thackney]

Many projects similar to this take a lot of time due to environmental impact studies and permitting. Such would be the case if this was a petroleum processing facility.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Can you make diesel out of CHEESE?........

There are many dairy farms in Wisconsin and manure disposal is a major problem for dairy farms, pig farms, and feed lots. I have always thought there must be a simple way for those farms to turn their manure into electricity to run the farms with some left over to sell to the grid. The methane is a natural byproduct and the remaining dried and treated sludge could be spread over the farm for growing better and more feed products

Looks like a win-win to me so there must be a kicker somewhere.

[TKDietz]

"Hopefully all these new biodiesel plants and ethanol plants will allow the US t get rid of the subsidy wherein farmers are paid NOT to produce, in effrt to artificially inflate world grain prices. "

I don't think those subsidies are paid anymore. They've given up on inflating the world's grain prices and now just pay farmers more the more they produce, which of course leads to overproduction, which in turn pushes prices lower. The government decides what farmers should be getting for a bushel of corn, and if the actual market price is below the price the government comes up with, the government makes up the difference, whatever it might be.

We get a lot of complaints about this from other countries where our cheap subsidized produce is putting farmers out of business. Believe it or not, we're actually putting Mexican farmers out of business with our corn that is sold there cheaper than they can produce it themselves. Rice, cotton, corn, and several other heavily subsidized crops are dumped dirt cheap on world markets driving prices down. This is a major bone of contention for many developing nations whose economies depend heavily on agriculture. We aren't the only ones who do it. The Europeans subsidize like crazy as well, as does Australia and many other developed nations. OECD nations ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD ) pay out more in subsidies each year than the combined total GDP of the entire continent of Africa. You can bet this is a major contributor in the "the man's keeping us down" sentiment developing (third world) nations have against the West, as agriculture is a major if not the main source of employment and income in so many of them.

[roaddog727]

".... cheese-diesel is out of the question,..."

What, no Cheesel?

[Red Badger]

...Looks like a win-win to me so there must be a kicker somewhere.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1708013/posts

[Red Badger]

Oh, okay, now I see what you mean. Biodiesel plants are mucho simpler to build than petro refineries. That is the key. Don't get the picture in your mind of huge smoke belching stacks and cracking towers with miles of pipes and such. Biodiesel production is a much simpler process. Remember, biodiesel is essentially - oil! To oversimplify just a bit, all that is necessary to produce it is:

a) Dump in feedstock (seeds)

b) Squeeze like hell.

c) Collect oils in tanks.

d) Filter out solids.

e) Put in car and drive.

Like I said, a bit oversimplified, but the basics are there. ......

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Good article, thanks.

At the moment the recycling that many people do is just a feel good exercise with no economic advantage. This process would change that. Producing fuel from free feed stock is hard to beat.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Also, as far as turning cheese into diesel, according to the article in the link you provided, almost any thing can be turned into its gaseous state and the carbon extracted for use as fuel. (Hydrocarbons are petroleum) There were a few other articles awhile back that showed a process for turning turkey guts and other offal into fuel, too.

Anyway, the point is that the government used to, and probably still does, buy excess production from farmers and store it in warehouses at quite an expense. That was one reason we were so happy to send millions of tons of grain to needy countries - it was cheaper than storing it.

Turning it into fuel would be even better. But better than that would be eliminating the program if it still exists.