Big biodiesel news from Houston and San Francisco
Biodiesel may no longer be quite the industry darling it was a year ago, but that doesn't mean everyone is taking a hold on approach. There were two big pieces of biodiesel news out this weekend, one from Houston, Texas and the other from San Francisco, California.
In Houston, as we first heard about almost a year ago, the largest biodiesel refinery in the U.S. is underway. Tomorrow, the plant will open at the Port of Houston. The refinery belongs to GreenHunter Energy and can make 105m gallons of biodiesel a year. The plant will use a variety of feedstocks (the only ones mentioned are the non-food tallow and jatropha) and can store 700,000 barrels of the biofuel onsite.
Meanwhile, over in San Francisco, the news is that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has given the city a million dollar grant to recycle restaurant grease into biodiesel. The city has been collecting grease since last year and the grant will be used to build a biodiesel production facility at the Oceanside Sewage Treatment Plant. The idea is to "create a closed loop where all of the grease its restaurants produce is recycled and used to power the city's fleet of biodiesel trucks," writes the San Francisco Business Times. Area biodiesel producers aren't pleased (the competition killed some of them), but the city is moving forward.
[Source: GreenHunter, San Francisco Business Times]
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