Moving into the future
Friday, January 12, 2007 10:56 AM PST
Jennifer Colton
Argus Observer
New Plymouth
Six months after a deadly fire ripped through the Blue Sky Biodiesel plant in New Plymouth, company officials are expanding, moving forward and looking toward the future.
After the July 7 explosion, Blue Sky Biodiesel officials set out to rebuild the plant, the first facility of its type in Idaho, and the first biodiesel shipment was dispatched Sept. 8.
“There’s been a lot of support and a lot of help from a lot of people,” Blue Sky Biodiesel Controller Kyle Williams said Wednesday. “I know the owners want us to have a positive impact on this community. We just keep on working toward making biodiesel.”
Blue Sky Biodiesel uses methanol in what is known as a continuing process — rather than a batch process — to convert soy bean oil and petroleum diesel into B20 Biodiesel and glycerin.
In October, construction began on a second building at the plant.
“The room (the accident) was in was where the soy oil tanks were,” Williams said. “The problem we have is when it gets cold, soy oil doesn’t want to flow, it gets thick. So the new building was built — number one to replace the storage area and number two for the process itself. Essentially we will bring in our raw product into the new building in 25,000 gallon storage tanks, then it will run through a pipeline into the old building where it will start production.”
The fuel will then go into tanks for testing — to make sure all the methanol has been removed and the product follows American Society for Testing and Materials standards — before finally returning to a storage tank designed for distribution.
“We’re trying to make sure there’s not too much water in it, not too much soy bean oil, no methanol,” Richard Miller, a Blue Sky employee who handles a variety of jobs, said. “We have to get all those things down to certain levels so it can meet the definitions ASTM says is biodiesel.”
Since July, the tanks have remained outside, and the new storage area will help keep the oil at a usable temperature in the winter months.
“It’s going to be like an employee sauna in there in the summer though,” Miller said. “When the biodiesel come out of the process, it’s 200 to 220 degrees.”
In addition to the holding area, the new building will house two offices, a reception area, conference room, break room, control room and a new testing lab with air conditioning. The current lab will remain in the old building.
“We’re not real sure how that will work out,” Williams said. “Probably most of the lab part will be done over in the new building.”
Officials will begin moving into the offices in the new building next week, but the movement of the tanks could take longer, depending on the weather.
“We’re getting ready to make a big (production) push when we move into the new building,” Williams said. “I would say the cold weather has not decreased the demand, but because of moving and trying to get into a new building, we’ve actually been kind of slow.”
The plant is producing 20 gallons per minute on average while employees work to improve the product. Eventually, Williams said, the plant will produce 40 gpm, Williams said.
“At 20, we could fill a 25,000 (gallon) tank in a day,” Miller said. “That’s 9.1 million gallons a year. When we go 40, we’re going to double that.”
Both Miller and Williams said the plant could produce 40 gpm at this time, but they are still refining and improving the process.
“We try something,” Miller said. “We see this works, this doesn’t, and this can be done better.”
Blue Sky Biodiesel will be featured during the Harvest Clean Energy Conference in Boise later this month, and 80 individuals have signed up for a facility tour Jan. 28, Blue Sky owner Rob Black said.
“We’re just looking forward to getting into the new building and putting into effect some of the changes we made recently,” Williams said.
