Saria’s rendering operations produces two products: meat and bone meal, which under European Union regulations must be incinerated in power plants or cement plants; and animal fats, which are used in lipo-chemistry, in the company’s plants to provide energy (instead of gas or mineral oil), and now in the production of biodiesel.
According to Saria, the fats being used in their biodiesel are derived from animal by-products from animals fit for human consumption. The fats from dead animals and specified risk material are not being used in the production of biodiesel, but instead are mostly incinerated.
Saria’s own engineers, in cooperation with engineers from BioDiesel International of Austria, developed the stainless steel facility. The company’s manufacturing process is similar to producing plant-based biodiesel. In the winter, the animal fat-based biodiesel is blended with rapeseed oil for better lubricity during the cold German months.
In Canada, Biox Corp. is using new technology to run a pilot plant that can handle any feedstock, with yellow grease provided by a Canadian renderer being the primary stock of choice. The company’s first full-scale plant, located in Toronto, was scheduled to be up and running in January for commissioning in early summer.
The process was developed by the University of Toronto and is conventionally based with the production of fatty acid methyl esters, but uses a co-solvent such as tetrahydrofuran or methyl tertiary butyl ether to achieve the reaction at low pressure in one phase and increase the rate of methanolysis reaction.
Most of the solvent can be recycled, and so the enhanced performance results in lower costs – said to be about half those for conventional biodiesel processes. Biox President Tim Haig said that the process is cost competitive compared to petroleum diesel.
The company started up a 250,000 gallon per year pilot plant in May 2001. Haig said he expects the commercial plant to have a capacity in the region of five million gallons per year.
UK Grocer Going Biodiesel
Reuters news service reported that British supermarket chain Asda will begin using chicken waste and used cooking oil to power its delivery trucks.
Asda’s Environmental Manager Ian Bowles told Reuters that the chain’s 258 stores in the United Kingdom (UK) generated 138,000 liters (36,500 gallons) of chicken waste and cooking fat, which, after April, would be transformed into biodiesel and used to fuel delivery lorries.
“Historically, chicken waste and used cooking fat from our in-store rotisseries and canteens has gone to landfills,” Bowles told Reuters. “But now we have a more sustainable option… turning it into environmentally friendly fuel.”
The used cooking oil will be subject to a process called esterification, in which hydro and carbon molecules are altered, yielding product similar to diesel oil.
“The UK produces 50-90 million liters [13 to 24 million gallons] of waste cooking oil a year,” Bowles said. “It seems like an awful waste of resource to just send it away to landfills or pour it down the sink.”
International Report - February 2002 Render