GreenHunter's large Biodiesel Investment - 6/16/08

GreenHunter Energy of Grapevine just opened a 105 million gallon biodiesel facility in Houston which is the largest biodiesel refinery to date.  This will make the state of Texas the leading producer of alternative fuels like biodiesel.

GreenHunter an 18 month old company has made this $55 million investment in biodiesel refinery capable of producing biodiesel from multiple sources: vegetable oils, animal fats, and waste petroleum products.

The rising cost of soybean oil and the difficulty in finding other low cost sources of feedstock has caused biodiesel plants to struggle.

"Fortunately for the industry, if you can produce high-quality biodiesel, you can sell every drop you make. It's the feedstock where most of the industry is struggling," said Jack Zedlitz, director of corporate communications for GreenHunter. "We can take any feedstock and blend them interchangeably."

Finding multiple sources of feedstock is important for any biodiesel plant.

The GreenHunter refinery was originally built to process used motor oil.  The biodiesel plant has a storage capacity of 700,000 gallons.

The National Biodiesel board has reported biodiesel makers last year in the U.S. produced 450 million gallons which is 250 million more than the previous year.

GreenHunters’ Houston plant is located next to their biodiesel distributor Direct Fuels which reduces transportation cost.

Soybeans have more than doubled in two years causing Earth Biofuels of Dallas to modify its Durant, OK biodiesel plant.  Now they are processing used restaurant vegetable oil instead of soybean oil it was originally designed to handle.

Earth Biofuels has signed a contract with Fort Worth Based Alliance Processors for up to 400,000 gallons a month of used restaurant vegetable oil collected from restaurants across Texas.

GreenHunter is reducing its dependence on food crops by investing in plantations of jatropha which is an inedible plant that grows wild in India; the seed oil is being used for biodiesel feedstock.

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