Biodiesel group expands recycled fats use

12 February 2008 22:51  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Tellurian Biodiesel, a California-based company, will target the use of second generation, recycled, fats in its biodiesel production stream, a company source said on Tuesday.

“It always made more sense to our group to use recycled materials,” Joe Gershin, vice president of sales and marketing for Tellurian said.

The biofuel company said it intends to use recycled cooking oil from such major fast-food chains as McDonald’s, as well as low-grade rendered tallow material with high FFA (free fatty acid) content, and even trap-grease material would be considered as a low cost feedstock.

“Feedstocks are 80% of biodiesel production costs and our model seeks to use the lowest valued feedstock possible as a cost-efficiency option,” Gershin said.

Using its newly acquired superior process technologies (SPT), Tellurian plans to take the recycled low-value fats and greases and produce quality biodiesel that would meet ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and EN (European Standard) requirements.

Currently, the US biodiesel industry is floundering amid fitful 20-25% production capacity utilisation and very low profit margins largely due to initial widespread use of soybean oil feedstock, according to many market sources.

Following the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) 11 January report, commodity markets soared, pushing soybean oil futures into the 50 cents/lb region and shoving soybeans through a 35-year-old record of $12.50/bushel, sources at the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) recently said.

For some independent thinking on biofuels visit Simon Robinson's Big Biofuels Blog

For more on biodiesel visit ICIS chemical intelligence

By: Judith Taylor
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