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My biorefinery is bigger than yours
May 30, 2008 - Exclusive By Carli Ghelfi, Cleantech Group
Even the biorefineries are big in Texas.
It never ends, does it?
Today Houston, TX-based GreenHunter Energy (AMEX: GRH) announced celebration plans for next week's opening and tap-turning (as they say) of its new biodiesel refinery—which it claims is the 'nation's single largest' to date.
Right. Because, at 105 million gallons of theoretical annual capacity, that's technically ahead of Imperium Renewables' refinery, which has a theoretical capacity of 100 million gallons per year. Though not by much.
While it's great that the U.S. is soon to have 105 million gallons more of biorefining capacity on Monday than it does today, it never ceases to amuse that companies always have to one-up the other.
'Oh, you have all LEDs in your office? Well, we have LEDs in our offices AND in the parking lot, so there!'
'Oh, you have 1.6 MW of solar on your roof? Well, we'll put on 1.9!' (case in point: see Applied Materials to out-green Google).
For construction geeks like me, if you're interested in seeing the progress of the refinery, GreenHunter has photos posted from last October.
To give credit where credit is due, the jolly GreenHunter converted a waste-oil refinery into a biodiesel refinery that intends to not only produce the most gallons per year in the U.S., but is to also to produce the highest grade B100 biodiesel per year—and all from non-food feedstock at that.
Hopefully all those diesel trucks in Texas can start fillin’ up.
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Comments
Dear Carli and
Submitted on June 5th, 2008 by Hindsight is 2020 (not verified)Dear Carli and Greentech,
You are a bit too enthusiastic about putting down biodiesel companies. Jennifer Kho is notorious for giving biodiesel bad press. If it bleeds, it leads, right?
Bad news sells more ads. Intellectual honesty gets left by the wayside. Whatever happened to accuracy in journalism?
Instead of focusing on selling controversy to generate advertising dollars, why not focus on what is really happening?
Carli, get your facts straight. GreenHunter is not a re-purposed waste vegetable oil facility. It is a former methanol processing plant that has been turned into a multi-purpose renewable energy complex that will perform the following tasks:
* provide a critical component of much-needed biofuels infrastructure in a unique facility that has deep water access, railway access, tank storage, and proximity to local refineries and petrol distribution centers where biodiesel blending is needed
* re process off-spec methanol into high-grade methanol
* produce biodiesel from multiple feed stocks, including animal fats, imported soy (because we don't have enough in the US to go around despite what the NBB would like you to believe), jatropha, waste vegetable oil, sustainable palm, coconut oil, other greases, and eventually algae and biomass-to-biocrude via thermochemical processing
* present a unique facility with deep water access, railway access, tank storage, biodiesel processing, methanol processing, glycerine processing, and import-export capabilities for multiple biofuels and feedstocks
Next year you will eventually understand why the confluence and combination of these multi-purpose facilities will prove to be critical to the long term economic viability of the US Biofuels industry.
Hindsight is 2020. Look at the future and you will understand why GreenHunter is not just bigger, but better than most biodiesel companies in the US because it is a multi purpose renewable energy complex. The facts will lead you to the truth, if that is what you value.
There is an abundance of opinion in the biofuels industry, but a shortage of facts.
GreenTech will not benefit in the long term from focusing on pop journalism instead of focusing on the facts, the future, and the real and critical elements needed to provide an economically sustainable biofuels industry.
Greenhunter is one of the few companies invested in this endeavor. Give credit where credit is due - and do your homework, please.
- Industry Insider & Advocate for Truth in Journalism
Putting down GreenHunter?
Submitted on June 6th, 2008 by Dallas KachanSorry, I don't see GreenHunter as being "enthusiastically put down" in Carli's little blog piece. Just a bit of fun-poking at its attempt to garner coverage claiming to be the largest biodiesel facility in the U.S. on the basis of a 5MMG/yr nameplate delta over competitors. Any company playing PR games deserves to be called on them.
That said, we cover other GreenHunter developments, and if the company does significant things in the future, we'd be all too happy to write about them.
Dallas Kachan
Acting Editor/Publisher
Cleantech Group
Shrill overreaction
Submitted on August 13th, 2008 by Marianna (not verified)Wow, this is clearly a company with something to be defensive about. Why such an overreaction? And what does Carli have to do with GreenTech and Jennifer Kho anyway? Isn't that a different company? I wasn't left with a bad impression of the GreenHunter at all after reading Carli's post, but now I wouldn't touch it with a 10-mile pole -- much less with my money. Have some class!
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