Florida's Ag-Oil to Build $20M Pilot Biodiesel Refinery

RECHARGE.COM
By Richard A. Kessler
Published: Thursday, July 2 2009 / Last updated: Friday, July 3 2009

Ag-Oil, a biodiesel start-up company based in Delray Beach, Florida, plans to build a $20mn pilot-scale biodiesel refinery using jatropha and several other feedstocks, says chief executive Teri Gevinson.

The plant, which will have potential to produce 15mn gallons a year of biodiesel, will be located in an agricultural reserve west of Delray Beach, which is north of Fort Lauderdale along the Atlantic Ocean.

Plans call for bringing the facility online in 2011. Ag-Oil estimates the refinery and plantation will create 128 direct jobs and 915 indirect jobs.

Gevinson, whose primary business is real estate, says she bought 103 acres of land in the reserve and will pay farmers to grow jatropha, an inedible oilseed that thrives in hot climates in Africa, Asia and parts of Latin America.

She says her plantation will help test jatropha’s ability to adapt to Florida’s subtropical weather. Her company will also demonstrate a mechanical harvester for jatropha, whose seeds are gathered using manual labor in other parts of the world.

"We are excited to be able to change US dependence on foreign oil," she says. Florida has awarded Ag-Oil a $2.5mn renewable energy grant to pursue its biodiesel feedstock trials that will include algae.

United Environment and Energy (UEE), based in Horseheads, New York, is supplying process technology for the refinery.

"The continuous flow technology developed by UEE to produce algae biodiesel and other non-food oilseed based biodiesel will allow for faster and cheaper production of biodiesel," says Ben Wen, vice president of UEE.

The federal government’s Argonne National Laboratory will provide a glycerin desalinization process which will ensure successful long-term recycling of the water used by the refinery and increase overall fuel production by about 10%, says Gervinson. Ag-Oil will also partner with the University of Southern Illinois to implement continuous culture research which has the potential to significantly increase the output from the Jatropha seed oil conversion to bio-diesel.

The University of Florida will also participate in the project.