EDC Says Biodiesel Plant A Good Blend With City

DADE CITY - If one man's trash is another man's treasure, Bill Nelley is sitting on 80,000 gallons of liquid gold.

That's how much chicken grease Nelley's employer, Agri-Source Fuels LLC, has stored in a stainless steel tank at the former Pasco Beverage Co., now the Dade City Business Center.

Agri-Source Fuels is a year-old company that turns agricultural waste into biodiesel, a low-pollution fuel blended with petroleum-based diesel to reduce emissions.

Agri-Source was among seven Pasco County companies honored Tuesday night during the Pasco Economic Development Council's annual awards banquet. It was honored as Manufacturing Industry of the Year for small companies. Zephyrhills Spring Water Co. won for large companies.

EDC President Mary Jane Stanley said Agri-Source was honored because, as the state's only biodiesel firm, its $1.7 million venture in Dade City represents an investment in the future.

"They're at the forefront of the search for alternative fuels that the country and the state are involved in," Stanley said.

Agri-Source is part of a nationwide boom in biodiesel production that has been driven by a federal subsidy set to expire at the end of this year. A $4 million state grant will help set up another biodiesel plant in the Panhandle in the coming years, company officials said.

The company makes about 3 million gallons now, but it has the potential to expand that to 10 million gallons in the near future and to 60 million gallons within a few years.

"Feedstock is the limitation in this industry," said Peggy Mathews, Agri-Source's Tallahassee-based spokeswoman.

Competition for rendered chicken grease has caused its price to double to 45 cents a pound in the last year, Nelley said.

Another potential feedstock, soybeans, has become so expensive they're not a feasible alternative, he said.

The demand for the final product keeps the plant humming.

"Generally, we make the product as fast as the feedstock comes in," Nelley said. "And we sell it as fast as we make it."

When scouting for a place to set up shop, company officials said they found a natural fit at the former Dade City juice plant, which had everything they were looking for, including 6 million gallons of food-grade storage.

"This room used to be 18 degrees," Nelley, the company's plant manager, said recently as he stepped over a low block retaining wall into the former juice plant's cavernous indoor tank farm.

Now, the room's a sweltering 105 degrees, the heat keeps the raw material stored there liquid, Nelley said.

The tank farm's 50 stainless steel tanks, about half of them the height of three-story buildings, once held orange juice. Now, they store grease, the castoff waste of poultry plants, and biofuel waiting for shipment.

The last time he walked the corridors between the tanks, Nelley was vice president of manufacturing for Pasco Beverage.

Handling biofuel and handling orange juice isn't all that different, he said.

"You're working with liquids inside pipes using pumps and valves. It's very similar," said Nelley, who holds a doctorate in chemistry. "Where it's different is biodiesel involves a chemical reaction rather than just squeezing oranges."

Just outside the tank farm doors, smaller steel tanks hold liquid grease, wood alcohol and sodium methylate, a caustic material used to drive the chemical reaction at the heart of making biodiesel.

A pump blends the three materials in another tank where the alcohol replaces glycerine at the end of the grease's fat molecules.

The chemical process takes several days to run its course. Eventually, the mixture moves to settling tanks where it sits for four days. The glycerine sinks to the bottom. Agri-Source's owners plan to refine and sell the glycerine to use in makeup and medical supplies, Mathews said.

With the glycerine gone, Agri-Source is left with pure biodiesel, or B100 in industry parlance.

Agri-Source sells its B100 to a fuel distributor that blends it with petroleum-based diesel to create B20, the federal standard for biodiesel. That then goes into tractor-trailers and government vehicles across the state, Nelley said.

"You can burn B100, but with the little bit being made in Florida, it wouldn't go very far," Mathew said.

2008 INDUSTRY OF THE YEAR WINNERS

Manufacturing, Category 1: Agri-Source Fuels LLC, Dade City

Manufacturing, Category 2: Zephyrhills Spring Water Co., Zephyrhills

Service/Distribution, Category 1: Pampering Plumber, Trinity

Service/Distribution, Category 2: Web Direct Brands Inc., Odessa

New Business: Residence Inn at NorthPointe, Land O' Lakes

Special Contribution: Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative, San Antonio

Special Recognition: Pasco Regional Medical Center, Dade City

Source: Pasco Economic Development Council