Big on biodiesel

Published 8:04 pm Friday, November 9, 2007

ARLINGTON — Dirty, used cooking oil from some of the region’s best restaurants, biggest companies and most famous tourist attractions ends up at a nondescript metal building just off I-5 north of Arlington.

That’s where Standard Biodiesel is turning thousands of gallons of the oil into useful fuel cleaner than that of petroleum diesel.

Its biodiesel was selling last week for about $3.30 a gallon, or 40 cents less than regular diesel, which has been at record prices.

As founder and vice president John Wick explains, Standard Biodiesel has the freedom to set its prices based on its own costs instead of the prevailing rate for crude oil.

Biodiesel-producing plants are being built nationwide at an unprecedented rate, many getting ready to turn canola seed and other crops into fuel.

But Standard Biodiesel is one of just a couple plants in Washington that are recycling waste vegetable oil into new fuel. Last month, the Arlington plant processed 70,000 gallons of oil into biodiesel, with the capacity to ultimately do 10 times that amount.

In the meantime, the company has set up a business-minded operation to collect the basic ingredient from thousands of businesses stretching from Lacey to the Canadian border. It has more than 4,000 collection bins and barrels spread out in the region. This summer, the business collected all the waste oil produced during the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe.

“We have most of the major icons in Seattle,” said John Schofield, Standard Biodiesel’s president and chief executive officer, adding that Microsoft, Safeco Field, Qwest Field and the Pike Place Market are among the businesses that provide used cooking oil.

Previously, the Pike Place Market was paying to have cooking oil from its restaurants hauled away. Marshall Klabo, who works in the market’s facilities services office, said Standard now reimburses the market for the hundreds of gallons of oil it produces each week.

Standard pays up to 10 cents a gallon for the cooking oil it collects, Wick said. With incentives like that, he and Schofield estimate they have gotten contracts from about one-third of the region’s producers of used cooking oil.

It all comes via trucks — powered by biodiesel — into a big filtering tank at the processing plant.

The tank emits an odoriferous mixture of fried food smells. After specks of food waste are filtered out, the remaining oil goes through 3,500-gallon tanks and other processing steps. Wick and Schofield don’t divulge details of that proprietary process.

At the end, clean, pure biodiesel emerges. For every unit of energy put into the processing, Wick and Schofield estimate they get eight to 10 units out in return.

In order to qualify for tax credits, Standard adds a small amount of crude oil-based diesel to its biodiesel. But 99 percent of the fuel the company sells at its pump or distributes to others is made solely from waste vegetable oil.

Dan Harbeck, president of Get Distilled Water Service in Mukilteo, said all three of his business’ trucks run on Standard’s fuel. “I love it. I go out of my way to fill my tank when I’m up there,” he said.

Harbeck said he likes knowing his vehicles are burning more environmentally friendly fuel. Being stuck in traffic no longer means choking on noxious-smelling fumes from his trucks.

“It’s not a stinky truck anymore,” he said.

Wick, who grew up in Alaska and worked in commercial fishing there, said seeing plenty of environmentally wasteful and damaging practices inspired him to research alternative fuels. He experimented with producing small amounts of biodiesel.

John Schofield, who has worked primarily in the insurance industry, was part of an investment group that was interested in opportunities in biodiesel. The two teamed up last year and had their plant operational by last spring.

Since starting, Standard’s staff has grown from three to 20. The two won’t talk much about how their enterprise is doing financially, with Schofield saying only that “investors are happy.”

There are a few other biodiesel producers around the state using waste vegetable oil to produce fuel, while others are using oil from crops as their main ingredient, said Nikola Davidson of the Northwest Biofuels Association. But Standard Biofuels’ collection of waste oil has shown others there’s a viable business in that, she said.

“They have done an amazing job of creating this model,” Davidson said.

Wick and Schofield don’t just produce the fuel, they use it in the trucks they drive on their own commutes; Wick lives in the Olympic Peninsula, Schofield in Renton. The fuel also powers the company’s small fleet of trucks and the processing equipment.

The filtered food waste from the vegetable oil is taken to an anaerobic digester in Lynden, which rapidly decomposes the organic matter. Glycerin, a byproduct of biodiesel production, is sold for a variety of uses.

“Everything we do here is about recovery, recycling, sustainability and being smart,” Wick said.

Schofield expects production to keep increasing at the Arlington plant, even as other plants pop up around the Northwest.

“The demand for biodiesel is so large, it won’t have much effect,” he said.

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com