Commissioning the Bio-Refinery
It’s working. Three systems working in harmony. Today we had our first recovered methanol come off the line.
We conceived of the bio-refinery project a year ago. Engineering, permitting, capital formation, everything went into play. We designed it. We built it. And today we turned it on.
It’s rather like building a chemical plant inside an operating chemical plant. Much more challenging in some ways. He had hoped to turn this on in June, but the used condenser we bought would not hold pressure. Tuesday and Bruce have laid down 3000 welds on this plant, and none of them leak. But inside our used condenser, one tube would not hold. We plugged it. Another one went south. Plugged it. And another one went.
Our condenser vendor came to our aid. He had warranted that the thing worked. He brought us another one. Same thing. Holding pressure is not new to us. That system is something we know, and should come easily.
So we ripped the whole thing out and sent it off to Charlotte to be re-plumbed. Which meant we waited. There went June and July. When it came back the bell on the end of the unit would not hold pressure. A custom gasket and some metal sculpting by the fabrication crew solved the problem.
Pressure: check.
Then we fired up our Ag Solutions boiler. We are not boiler folks. We plumbed it in wrong. Cut out the pipe. Did it over. Brought on Joe, our new fabrication guy with boiler experience. He did some re-design. And added an expansion tank.
And the damn thing kicks out before hitting temperature. On again off again. We fired it on Number 2 diesel. I could watch the black smoke from the chimney from my desk window. We could smell the petroleum everywhere. Most of us have been away from petroleum so long we are hyper sensitive to its smells.
Still. It was the best looking air pollution I had ever seen. It meant we were about to take the bio-refinery out for a spin.
Switched to biodiesel. Beautiful cleanup. Smoke is invisible. The only way you know the boiler is running is when you detect a shimmer of heat agains the wires in the background.
But the boiler continually cut out. It turns out there is an electric eye which monitors flame color. It’s not ready for bio. And it turns out that by yanking the thing apart and spray painting the inside of the tube white (from black as it ships from the factory), it is problem solved. Boiler started building temperature and holding it.
An intriguing aside on the boiler front is some work Greg performed on our wash water. For years we have known that some biodiesel ships off to compost with our wash water. Greg played around with it in the lab. Designed and implemented a large scale system which allows us to “recover” that biodiesel. The biodiesel that comes out of our wash water is off-spec. It can’t be sold for onroad use. And sending it back through the wash-dry system is perceived to be too risky.
So we burn our recovered biodiesel in our newy working boiler. Rather than paying to haul it away and paying to have it tipped, it is the energy source for the bio-refinery. Cuts costs. Employs waste.
Heat: check.
The system that worked right out of the box was vacuum. This was our first such install.
And around noon yesterday, with heat, vacuum, and pressure working in three part harmony, we saw the glorious first drips of methanol coming off the line.
Nice.
Adding this plant to our process is going to vastly improve the carbon footprint of our fuel. It will allow us to recover methanol and reuse it. It will allow us to break out free fatty acids which we will sell to the boiler fuel market. And it will give us a purer crude glycerin which has a myriad of uses.
It will reduce our operating costs. Less methanol to buy, less tipping fees at the compost. There is a chance that by stripping the methanol out of the fuel phase before sending it to wash-dry we will be able to reduce wash-dry time and free up tankage. Time and tankage might enable another shift. Another shift would mean more biodiesel.
And more importantly it reduces the wastefulness of our operation.
We are jazzed. It’s been a big year. Another plant turned on.
Monday is our bio-refinery opening. It looks like I am not going to need my “Almost Open” sign that we used on the last one. Come join us if you are in the neighborhood…
Original post by Lyle