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This message has been edited. Last edited by: john galt,

Here in the Denver area I've noticed an increase in ads on Craigslist for the sale of WVO contracts, rendering businesses and related equipment.

Last summer we had b100 prices at a local oil company at $6.00 a gallon, when #2 was in the mid-$4.00 range. Seems like greed to me - given that the company making the b100 was enjoying that $1.00/gallon tax credit, which outside of capital investment and labor costs should have made feedstock and chemicals a zero cost factor.

Last summer we had a plethora of renderers offering absurd amounts of money for WVO - up to $1.00 per gallon which utterly destroyed the free WVO segment for backyard processors and private SVO users. Now we're seeing those same folks leaving the industry. Most of the larger establishments that produce 100's of gallons of oil per month got into relationships with renderers that installed those 200 gallon fiberglass vessels that filter and hold oil inside the establishment with hookups in the alleyway that were padlocked - a relatively large capital investment in order to secure their oil - they provided the equipment free of charge to the establishment. In the current market this cannot be cost effective. I'd like to see how their depreciation schedules and ROI look now. Bet ya they don't feel so smart about they "shrewd move" now...I had a manager at a local eatery show me the turnkey system, hundreds of feet of nice pipe and installation - the system must have cost upwards of $10,000 to install - and the establishment paid nothing for it with a 2 year contract to provide WVO and purchase new oil from the company..

My opinion, while purely unscientific, is that greed and short-sightedness is the cause of many of the woes the BD industry (as a whole) is seeing.

With #2 at around $2 a gallon there should be tons of used oil around for free or very low prices. It seams that these rendering companies should now be getting most of their used oil for free. I do not know what Bio is selling for now, but I would hope that the price would be coming down. People just will not pay another $2 a gallon for green fuel. At least not in our area.
On the other side though, it is easy for me to get all the oil that I need as the demand has really dropped.

Hmm maybe this is just another sign that smaller decentralized business model might work out better.

Read this via a link on biodieselnow.com

Report touts reviving rural communities by growing and using their own biodiesel

Another problem that the Forbes article doesn't even mention is that almost all of the new diesels being sold right now are biodiesel incompatible. As an owner of a retail biodiesel station, it's very painful for us to discourage new customers who come in with '09 TDIs, or '08 and newer pickups, etc. If the OEMs don't start making their new cars biodiesel compatible, then instead of a growing market for biodiesel, we will have an ever-shrinking market.

I already posted about our campaign in another thread so I won't repeat myself too much in this one, but please visit our website at http://savebiodiesel.org for more information on this subject, and to sign the petition asking the OEMs to make biodiesel compatibility a priority in their new diesel emissions and injection system designs.

See also http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/ev...84104603/m/297100311

quote:

Originally posted by jdlegg:
With #2 at around $2 a gallon there should be tons of used oil around for free or very low prices. It seams that these rendering companies should now be getting most of their used oil for free. I do not know what Bio is selling for now, but I would hope that the price would be coming down.

The price of yellow grease, aka WVO, has really been fluctuating lately. Right now (4-14) it is somewhat high, 17 cents per pound (see http://search.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/nw_ls442.txt for the daily yg and other prices. Week to date is 19 cents.

Multiply 17 by 7.63 pounds and you get $1.30 per gallon, the price that rendering companies sell it for to animal feed mfrs once they have strained and dewatered it.

The average price for the last 8 years was I would say about 12 cents per pound, with some periods around 8 cents and, during $4/gal gas, over 25 cents per pound (almost $2.00 per gallon).

As noted by others, if gas wasn't subsidized in the U.S. it would be $4-5 per gallon right now and biodiesel could compete. That's the real problem.

Gonna plug algae as the future of the industry here. I spent 3 months investigating algae to see if it was a hoax and then another 3 months just to be sure (since I really really hate being duped) and am now confident that it will happen soon. See my transcript of a recent Algae Industry webinar I posted on this site for reasons why I feel this way.

The recently formed Algal Biomass Organization met with Obama's Energy Team recently and were reportedly extremely keen to the idea (I guess it sounds enormously expensive which they seem to like).

quote:

Originally posted by clean and green:

The price of yellow grease, aka WVO, has really been fluctuating lately. Right now (4-14) it is somewhat high, 17 cents per pound (see http://search.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/nw_ls442.txt for the daily yg and other prices. Week to date is 19 cents.

Click the link above for friday's price - dollars per hundredweight/cents per pound

TALLOW, GREASE, AND LARD Lds Price Range Wtd Avg
Yellow grease (truck) 25.00 25.00 A

The last time grease prices were this high, diesel was at $4-4.50 a gallon in Wisconsin. Silver was $12-13 per ounce. Someone out there has enough money and credit to be driving this inflation


John, I reposted the algae story in a new thread under algae - non-fuel, with a reply.

Can the biodiesel industry be saved?
Frankly, I couldn't care less if it went under or not.
I strongly believe commercial Bio is a farce and despite the green flavour of the month, cash it in for all it's worth BS, Bio has been responsible for accelerating the use of fossil fuels and the earths resources far in excess of what it will save ( as Promised) for the distant foreseeable future.

Despite all the studies and political feel good white washing, I am totally and utterly convinced that at the end of the day, we would all be better off just burning good ol dino right now than trying to kid ourselves that Commercially mass produced Bio is some sort of temporary savior.

How much fossil fuel went into the manufacture of the components for all the plants around the world that now lie unused? How much fossil fuel is used in the production of Bio from farming to transportation of it to market. Oh yes, less than what you get back from the clean burning, angels singing and dancing Bio. Right!!

As soon as one starts really reading up on commercial bio be it here in Oz or in the states or anywhere else, there are a myriad of hurdles and holes in the story of just how good it is for the environment and the total energy and " cleanliness" of it's total cycle.

I have read the laughable argument that we need to do Bio now so the " second generation" production techniques will be better and the mistakes will be rectified.
I sure hope to hell that's not the same philosophy those that want to develop Nuclear power have in mind or we'll all be gone!

Instead of trying to cash in on what will be a passing fad ( just like all the rest) I will not support Commercial Bio until it has been perfected to a point where it comes at least close to living up to the Hype surrounding it.
Until such time, It should not be allowed to swallow up peoples money and hopes as well as resources that would be a lot more efficiently used right now in the ways that we have been developing their use for 50+ years.

We have the supporting technology now to develop the Bio process to the point where it is all it can be without having to build plants with known flaws and problems.
50 years ago they used to have to test fly and crash planes to know if they would work as designed or not, now days they are a 99.95 certainty before they even get to the prototype.
We should hold off producing commercial bio till the problems are figured out in the same way so when it is made, it's all it can and needs to be....Not just another great Con Job.

Just for those that are a bit slow on the uptake, to make a clear differentiation, I consider Home made Bio which for the greatest part is made from scrap materials and feed sources to be a very different matter. There is no doubt that the amount of fossil fuels used in Bio production by the typical DIY'er has got a significant return on the energy invested and has nothing like the issues of commercial Bio.

I don't agree that "commercial" bio is bad. If a commercial market can't be developed, then even homebrewers will be a dying breed because at some point they won't be able to get vehicles that burn bio.

Sure, there are a lot of companies that either have gone out of business, or been forced into bankruptcy but that's because they have unsustainable business plans. Who in their right mind would build a 10MMgy + plant that uses virgin vegetable oil as feedstock? First you are competing with food processors for the product and then you have speculators driving up the price.

I believe that you can commercially produce biodiesel from sustainable local feedstock sources and turn a tidy profit - if you don't overkill with the size of the plant. The problem isn't the commercial production, it's a government permitting/licensing process which takes about 6 months and a stockpile of cash to complete.