InterviewNew standards will aid US biodiesel

14 October 2008 20:35  [Source: ICIS news]

By Ben Lefebvre

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--New biodiesel quality standards for the US will ultimately help the industry more than they would harm it, an executive said on Tuesday.

Revisions by the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) will ultimately prove a boon for domestic producers and help make the country the largest consumer of the renewable fuel, said John Plaza, CEO of US biodiesel major Imperium Renewables. The company produces 100m gal/year (379m litres/year) of biodiesel from canola and soy oil.

“The important issue is that the fuel has to work for the customers, and having additional standards that prevent customer issues is what the industry needs. You’ll see more acceptance of the fuel and a more viable market,” Plaza said.

“The criteria aren’t just adding specifications for no reason. There’s a real issue of the fuel causing problems in the vehicles it’s used in,” he added.

ASTN released the new specifications on Tuesday, calling for biodiesel with lower cold-filter plug points (cfpp). Cold-filter plug points refer to the temperature at which the fuel starts to congeal and clog up engines.

Many the 170 biodiesel producers in the US fought against the new standards, saying they could put their businesses in jeopardy. Refiners producing palm methyl ester (PME), which has a relatively high cfpp, were seen as especially vulnerable.

Plaza said cold weather at Imperium’s Gray’s Harbor refinery, about four hours from the Canadian border, forced it to tackle the cfpp issue in 2006, sooner than competitors in the warmer southern states. He said the privately held company added a distillation column to its refining process to reduce the cfpp, but declined to say how much the move cost.

“It’s not a tremendously large capital expense. But I think it’s going to be a challenging time for some of the smaller producers that aren’t well capitalised and don’t have the ability to change,” he said.

Higher fuel quality, combined with US new renewable fuel standards (RFS) that call for 500,000 gal/year of biodiesel in 2009 and 1bn gal/year by 2012, will increase demand in the domestic market, Plaza said. More than 70% of US biodiesel is currently exported.

“With RFS kicking in on 1 January ... the US is likely to pick up again and be more economically viable than Europe in 2009,” he said.

The US is poised to become the world’s largest biodiesel market by 2012, according to a report global chemistry research firm SRI Consulting released earlier this month.

Bookmark Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels
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Author: Ben Lefebvre
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