In Bali, Indonesia, U.K.-based Green Fuels commissioned its turnkey biodiesel facility for Caritas Switzerland, an NGO focused on socioeconomic development in disadvantaged communities around the world. Green Fuels installed its 3,000 liter (792.5 gallon) per day FuelMatic GSX 3, the newest and smallest of its processors, which offers the same fully automated technology as the larger FuelMatic GSX processors but at a lower price. It’s the first biodiesel plant on Bali as well as the first time used cooking oil (UCO) has been recycled on the island. Caritas established a nonprofit social enterprise to run the biorefinery. One of Caritas’ primary goals is taking UCO out of the island’s food chain. A survey of more than 340 hotels and restaurants found that 50 to 60 percent of UCO was sold to waste pickers and then resold to and reused by informal food stalls. Caritas has initial commitments totalling 1,000 liters of used cooking oil per day from about 150 hotels and restaurants.

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Gulf Hydrocarbon Partners Ltd. has partnered with Akash Energy Inc. to reopen the Lone Star Terminal in North Houston offering biodiesel and renewable diesel. The terminal is located near Bush Intercontinental Airport and supports 24/7 loading. The Lone Star terminal has a total capacity of 6.7 million gallons, of which Gulf Hydrocarbon has leased 420,000 gallons of storage for biodiesel. The facility allows bobtail trucks and transport trucks to add biodiesel fuel to their diesel fuel mix. At the Lone Star Terminal, the drivers preset an Accuload meter for the requested volume, connect the Scully overfill protection system and their hoses, and then flip a switch to start pumping the biodiesel. The terminal is always open and accessible through a card key system, and the truck loading rack has a bay dedicated for biodiesel. All biodiesel at the Lone Star terminal meets the latest ASTM D6751 standards.

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Incbio, the Portuguese engineering company specializing in fully automated industrial ultrasonic biodiesel plants, is supplying DC Biofuels with a 7.5 MMgy biodiesel plant, equipped with Incbio’s ultrasonic reactors and solid catalyst acid esterification technology, to produce biodiesel from used cooking oils with up to 25 percent free fatty acids. Incbio recently introduced solid catalyst technology for acid esterification of high FFA feedstock into its plants. The Incbio-DC Biofuels deal was closed through mediation and support from International Procurement Tools. DC Biofuels also partnered with Tri-State Biodiesel subsidiary Beltway Biodiesel LLC, to launch a combined and expanded WVO collection, outreach and marketing effort that targets the capital region’s restaurants, large food service institutions, and others in the area.

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Alfa Laval recently introduced its Advanced Glycerol Treatment system, a prefabricated, turnkey biodiesel pretreatment solution for virtually any existing transesterification plant, scalable for a capacity of 400 to 40,000 gallons per day. The AGT system allows for source material flexibility as it increases vegetable and animal byproduct value by reducing the free fatty acids content down to 0.8 percent, resulting in higher quality oil, which is then easily processed into biodiesel fuel. The system also provides flexibility on the plant output side. Processors can tap off the biorefined oil at different stages of production and upgrading. The modular, prefabricated AGT pretreatment plant is characterized by low operational costs, high yield, heat recovery, low waste and emissions. No catalyst is needed, and it provides optimum use of surplus biodiesel glycerol output.

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Eslinger Biodiesel Inc. is scheduled to receive $6 million from the California Energy Commission’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program to build a commercial biodiesel production facility in Fresno. According to the CEC, the first phase of the $32 million refinery is expected to be operating within a year of funding, producing 5 MMgy of biodiesel made from waste vegetable oils and animal fats. Eventual production is expected to be 45 MMgy. The output, according to the CEC, will be shipped by pipeline to commercial blending facilities and is slated to be presold to companies obligated to purchase carbon credit offsets. In addition to high-quality biodiesel, the plant will produce pharmaceutical- and technical-grade glycerin. Pipeline transport of fuel and waterless processing will result in near-zero production emissions at the facility.

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Biodiesel Experts International unveiled its new, fully automated, skid-mounted enzymatic biodiesel processing system. After two years of development work to hone the process and build the first unit, the firm is now working to fill orders from customers around the globe. The systems can be ordered in various production volumes, with the smallest pilot unit rated at 50 liters (13.2 gallons) per hour. The pilot unit, dubbed Precision E50D—where E stands for enzymatic, 50 represents liters per hour and D means distillation—comes equipped with a centrifuge to preclean the feedstock, premix tanks, stirred reactors, settling tanks, a soap centrifuge, a wiped film evaporator to distill the biodiesel, metering pumps, automated valves, various sensors (pH, temperature, level, pressure, flow meters), and an automatic control panel. The systems can process any level of free fatty acids. The pilot unit costs around $100,000 and includes Israeli partner TransBiodiesel’s methanol-resistant enzyme technology, branded TransZyme. Estimated per-gallon operational cost is between 85 cents and $1, including the enzymes.