Benefuel bringing solid catalyst biodiesel to market

Most biodiesel plants have to be picky about the kinds of feedstocks they take in, but Chicago-based Benefuel said its new system can handle almost any vegetable oil or high free fatty acid animal fat.

The company announced plans for a $25 million facility today using its novel solid catalyst that it said can turn the feedstocks directly into biodiesel without the need for pre-processing, saving time and money.

The majority of biodiesel production involves three ingredients, the feedstock, an alcohol, and a catalyst, typically a liquid catalyst like sodium methylate.

"We eliminate the requirement for that liquid catalyst," Rob Tripp, president and CEO of Benefuel, told the Cleantech Group.

"Instead of sloshing together all three of those ingredients and heating them up to achieve a reaction, we actually just push our methanol and our feedstock through a fixed bed reactor, which is packed with millions of little particles of solid catalyst."

Most base catalysts cannot operate with a significant amount of free fatty acids in the oil.

The 10 million gallon per year pilot plant, to be built by Indiana's Seymour Biofuels with a reactor provided by Benefuel, will be located in Seymour, Ind. The two companies plan to begin production in late 2008.

The benefit of Benefuel's process is that there's no caustic liquid left over and no soap formation. Tripp said the solid catalyst also produces a market-ready glycerin byproduct. All biodiesel manufacturing typically produces about 10 percent glycerin.

"The vast majority of producers right now in the U.S. and around the world are lucky if they can get rid of their glycerin at cost," said Tripp.

He said the glycerin currently coming out of the biodiesel market is a very crude glycerin that requires quite a bit of processing to bring it up to a commercial grade that has any value in it.

"Because there's no additional caustics or contaminants in the process, our glycerin is coming out at over 98, 99 percent purity."

Tripp said in addition to being able to sell the byproduct, the company has a process that can turn the glycerin into a fuel additive, like an oxygenate.

Benefuel is currently self-funded, with a management team that has experience in biodiesel, including chief technology officer Ravi Randhava, who was the magic link to the solid catalyst process.

"He went to school with a former director of the National Chemical Laboratory," said Tripp. The catalyst was developed in collaboration with chemical engineers from the Indian institution.

"They started talking about biodiesel four or five years ago," said Tripp. "And they began development of a solid catalyst, and it it took roughly three years of development to get to a commercial grade, where we're at now."

Benefuel has an exclusive worldwide license for the technology from the lab.

Tripp, who plans to locate future plants on site at renderers, said the company already has a relationship with one small renderer, and hopes to establish links to several more over the next twelve months.

Those future plans will take some cash, and Tripp said the company is actively talking to investors and expects to have something to announce within four to six months.

The company also plans to market and distribute its fuel locally. "We're trying to get away from that bigger is better mentality," said Tripp.

"Conventional biodiesel refining technology is very large, it takes up a lot of room," said Tripp. He said his company's platform is much smaller than a traditional refinery.

"A 10 million gallon biodiesel reactor will take up under a thousand square feet," he said. "It's also modular and truck transportable."

Tripp said the company could have a biodiesel refinery assembled in a factory and tested before it goes into the field, eliminating a significant portion of the time required to set up a plant.

"We'll match production and size based on the local availability of feedstocks," said Tripp.

One project they're working on in India involves some jatropha plantations in a rural area. With Benefuel's system, they plan to be able to drop off a container and plug it into some tanks that would already be set up, and be up and running within a few days.

Tripp said the plant doesn't have a huge appetite for electricity, but that there are options if a site doesn't meet its power needs.

"We'll have the ability to put in a generator and redirect fuel to power a diesel generator, which can in turn power the entire plant."

And Benefuel plans to keep an eye on all of its reactors, no matter where they are.

"All of our technology is networked at a very low level, so we're able to see every key operating metric through the entire refinery in real time, and pull that back to a centralized network operations center," said Tripp.

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