Three months after an explosion forced Imperium Renewables to shut down its biodiesel refinery, the company says it has completed repairs and restarted production.
On Tuesday, the plant received its first shipment of vegetable oil and has restored biodiesel production. While the market is improving, the huge plant will operate at less than full capacity for the time being.
Imperium founder and chief executive John Plaza states: “We are thrilled to be producing again. We have replaced the damaged equipment and re-designed the glycerin neutralization system to ensure such a rupture won’t happen again.”
Glycerine, a dark liquid, is a co-product of biodiesel production.
In addition to the plant repairs, the biodiesel market appears to be on the mend.
Imperium is seeing increased demand for biodiesel in the Pacific Northwest, thanks to a mandate in British Columbia, Canada, that took effect 1 January, as well as last year’s mandate in Oregon. On the federal level, the Environmental Protection Agency moved forward on rules for the Renewable Fuel Standard last month. And, the US Senate passed a jobs measure today that restores the $1-per-gallon biodiesel tax credit, which was allowed to expire at the end of 2009 and without which the industry could not compete.
Plaza says these factors “will allow us to continue to expand production, hire additional employees at our plant, and add much needed revenue to the state of Washington”.
It is a significantly improved picture from a year ago, when Imperium was forced to cut about 24 jobs at the refinery in the face of “dramatically reduced global demand for biodiesel, high feedstock prices and extreme volatility in the petroleum fuel markets”.
The $88m refinery – with annual capacity of 100 million gallons, the largest in the US – was idled last summer, serving as a storage site for Argentinean soybean-based biodiesel.
Production had resumed not long before the explosion.
With this latest restart, Imperium is using canola from Pacific Northwest growers as a feedstock, which the company notes is in keeping with Obama Administration’s strategy for the fuel.
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