Waste not:
Soybeans
By E.M. Morrison
Minnesota growers raise more than one billion dollars worth
of soybeans a year. About half of
Minnesota’s bean crop is exported, and the rest is processed
for oil and meal. One in four bushels of soybeans feeds
livestock. Soybeans are also used for food and an amazing
array of consumer and industrial products.
SOYBEAN OIL
Oil is the main product of the soybean crushing industry.
About 70 percent of soybean oil refined in Minnesota is used
as food, especially cooking oil. The rest is refined for
countless industrial products, such as paint, ink,
adhesives, lubricants, solvents, industrial cleaners and
plastics — to name just a few. Soybean oil is also found in
hundreds of everyday consumer items, like candles,
cosmetics, household cleaning products, engine oils and
biodiesel fuel.
Blend in biodiesel
Minnesota requires diesel fuel to be blended with
two-percent biodiesel oil. Biodiesel,
which can be made from vegetable oil, animal fats or
recycled greases, reduces tailpipe and
particulate emissions. Tax incentives are expected to
significantly increase biodiesel demand.
Minnesota’s three biodiesel facilities in Brewster, Redwood
Falls and Albert Lea have a total
annual refining capacity of more than 60 million gallons.
Glitzy glycerin
A coproduct of biodiesel production, glycerin is used in
cosmetics, liquid soap, antifreeze,
inks and lubricants. It’s also used in livestock feed, where
it increases the energy value and
makes the feed easier to handle. A Minnesota company is
blending glycerin with feather
meal to make beef and dairy supplements.
Soap story
A low-value coproduct of soybean oil processing, soapstock
is a gummy, amber-colored
material used for animal feed, soap and lubricants. It also
suppresses road dust and controls
pig manure odors. It can be burned to power turbines, too.
Making it stick
Surfactants made from soybean soapstock improve the
effectiveness of herbicides by making them adhere to the
plants. A leading soy surfactant, Preference, is made by
Minnesota-based Agriliance.
Lecithin again
A coproduct of soybean oil processing, lecithin is used as a
powdered ingredient in foods such as cake mixes, cookies,
crackers, rolls, breads, donuts, instant beverages,
margarine and infant formula. It’s also used in
pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, paints and inks, rubber and
plastics. SoyMor in Albert Lea, Minn., operates a lecithin
fractionation facility that makes purified lecithin, sterols
and glycerin.
SOYBEAN MEAL
Soybean meal, the most important coproduct of soybean
crushing, supports Minnesota’s $4 billion livestock
industry. Farm-raised animals eat nearly two million tons of
soybean meal a year. As biodiesel demand grows, supplies of
soybean meal will increase, spurring the development of new
uses.
A fraction of its former self
Soybean meal can be broken into higher-value specialty
sugars and other components that
are used in foods and medicines.
HULLS
Soybean hulls are used mainly as livestock feed. New uses
include animal bedding, paper, and fuel.
Straw beds
Soybean straw can be used as bedding material in compost
barns. ■
Volumes of versatility
Glycerin is already used in hundreds of products but an
increasing supply of this biodiesel byproduct could open
more markets
By Dan Lemke
Marshall, Minn. — Glycerin is one of nature’s most
versatile substances, with uses ranging
from soap to candy to industrial lubricant. Any surplus
glycerin, a biodiesel byproduct, is quickly consumed by
market demand.
But that could change as the biodiesel industry grows, says
Rose Patzer, a chemist at AURI’s fats and oils lab in
Marshall. Already Minnesota is capable of producing about 60
million gallons of biodiesel annually and “as more biodiesel
plants start operating around the country, there is going to
be more glycerin flooding the market and affecting the
price,” she says.
So AURI and organizations such as the American Oil Chemists
Society are searching for more uses for the multi-faceted
substance.
Glycerin can be produced by transesterification, which
converts oil or animal fat to biodiesel. Reacting 100 pounds
of oil or fat with 10 pounds of methanol yields about 100
pounds of biodiesel and 10 pounds of the clear, odorless
liquid glycerin.
The biodiesel coproduct has more than 1500 uses — primarily
in candy, cake mixes, medicines, lotions, shampoo, soaps,
detergents and makeup. Industrial uses are also expanding —
in emollients, lubricants, solvents and chemical-dispersing
products.
AURI has been working with Central Bi-Products in Redwood
Falls, Minn., on a patented process that uses glycerin to
increase feather-meal density so the feed ingredient can be
shipped farther to more markets. Central Bi-Products
affiliate FUMPA Biofuels produces three million of biodiesel
annually. AURI has also evaluated glycerin’s combustibility
as a potential fuel source.
“Glycerin is going to be a revenue stream” for biodiesel
refiners, says Chuck Neece, Central Bi-Products research and
development director. “The industrial uses keep opening
up … including antifreeze, even a plane deicer. The
industrial markets don’t pay the same as the personal
products, but they will pay a good price for crude
glycerin.”
Neece says personal care and pharmaceutical buyers may pay
up to 50 cents a pound for
refined glycerin, while industrial market may pay only 15 to
25 cents per pound for crude glycerin. However, with the
equipment expense needed to refine glycerin to personal care
standards, processors may find better price margins with
crude glycerin — if all the methanol is stripped out.
Methanol in glycerin renders it virtually valueless.
Neece says he expects the higher-paying but smaller
personal-care market to be saturated
first, leaving more opportunity in the larger industrial
market.
■
Penny-wise fuel
Two
entrepreneurs pieced together a small biodiesel refinery
that will serve local market
BY Dan Lemke
Ironton, Minn. — Jay Idzorek and Ryan Hunt are thinking
small. Still, they have big plans for their biodiesel
business.
The partners own Green Range Renewable Energy, a small-scale
biodiesel refinery that has grown from a garage experiment
to a business that plans to sell biodiesel directly to
truckers and motorists.
Located in Ironton’s industrial park, the refinery is a
modest green building flanked by liquid storage tanks.
Inside, a biodiesel reactor that Idzorek and Hunt cobbled
together will produce 800-gallon batches of the
soybean-based fuel per day. Tiny by industry standards, the
Green Range plant will only generate about a quarter-million
gallons per year, but Hunt and Idzorek say it has great
potential.
Rather than dumping biodiesel into the bulk market, Green
Range is bringing the renewable fuel directly to customers.
The vertically-integrated business will install a fuel pump
at the refinery to sell biodiesel direct to trucking fleets.
“The bulk business doesn’t look real profitable for us
because we can’t compete,” Idzorek says. Most of the year,
Green Range will market straight biodiesel with little if
any petroleum fuel mixed in. “It makes the most sense for us
to sell our product, not petroleum. Since we’re producing
biodiesel, let’s sell biodiesel.”
Garage beginnings
Idzorek first heard about biodiesel three years ago.
After reading a do-it-yourself book on making the fuel, the
52-year-old construction worker collected waste grease and
started
producing biodiesel in his garage for his own use.
In 2005, Idzorek started thinking bigger.
He met Ryan Hunt, a chemical engineer,
through a mutual friend in the solar heating business. The
two schemed, then pieced together a batch biodiesel reactor
with “a lot of sweat equity,” Idzorek says. Locating used
equipment, swapping items, recycling parts and
even purchasing pieces off EBay, the thrifty partners built
the reactor and launched Green Range Renewable Energy last
fall.
From their Highway 210 location, they intend to serve a
small market between Brainerd and Duluth. Several trucking
fleets and other consumers have expressed interest, as
petroleum diesel prices remain high.
Price incentive
“The timing has been excellent,” Hunt says. Two years
ago the project would not have worked because of lower fuel
prices and minimal biodiesel awareness, he says. Now, “there
are a lot more people who are willing to try it. Just about
everyone I talk to would be willing to use it
and spend their money locally.”
“Energy in any form is saleable in this day and age,”
Idzorek adds, “particularly one that flows right into the
infrastructure that’s already in place.”
Green Range is registered with the National Biodiesel Board,
has worked with a current Minnesota biodiesel manufacturer
and is receiving technical assistance from AURI’s fats and
oils lab in Marshall. Idzorek and Hunt are fine-tuning their
process before embarking on full production. But even at
full capacity, the goal is to stay small and not attract too
much attention from competitors.
“We
hope to service a small market,” Idzorek says, “but go all
the way from production to
customer.” ■
 Frosty
FOE
Experts advise
using 100-percent biodiesel in warm weather only
By Dan Lemke
Cold temperatures are not biodiesel’s friend. In fact B-100,
or 100-percent biodiesel, starts to cloud and flow poorly
when the temperature reaches freezing. For that reason,
blends of more than 20-percent biodiesel are not recommended
during cold months.
“If you’re running even a B-20 blend in Minnesota, you’re
going to have fuel management issues when it’s cold,” says
Ken Bickel of the Center for Diesel Research at the
University of Minnesota. “You may have to look at using
additives or using more number-1 diesel fuel in your diesel
blend.”
Bickel says quality number-1 diesel is good to about 40
degrees below zero before cold flow is impacted. Adding
biodiesel will raise the cloud point. A 20-percent biodiesel
blend will raise the cloud point of number-2 diesel by about
3 to 7 degrees, he says. A 2-percent blend, such as that
currently sold in Minnesota, has virtually no impact on
cold-flow properties.
“Biodiesel’s cold
flow characteristics are heavily dependent upon the quality
of the base fuel,” Bickel says.
■
For more
guidelines on using biodiesel blends above 20 percent, see
the National Biodiesel Board's Web site:
www.biodiesel.org |
