Making biodiesel in Alaska has unique set of challenges for Alaska Waste

Jim Johnson, Waste & Recycling News Mike Shrewsbury oversees Alaska Waste's biodiesel plant, which converts used cooking oil into transportation fuel in Anchorage.

Mike Shrewsbury is a bit of a Pied Piper when it comes to championing biodiesel fuel production in his part of Alaska.

As Alaska Waste's biodiesel technician, he spends his days overseeing and operating the state's only commercial-scale biodiesel plant. It has the capacity to transform about 250,000 gallons of used cooking oil per year into fuel for his company's collection vehicles.

To hear him talk, the success of the program hinges on public education as well as execution in an area known for its cold temperatures.

"There is a huge market, but there is not a whole lot of understanding in terms of the general public understanding what the potential for biodiesel fuel is. But it's a good challenge. I like it," he said.

Alaska Waste has a network of commercial customers that collect their used cooking oil in large containers, according to Chris Welker, district manager for the company.

It was Welker and an intern on the ground floor of the project back in 2008 when the company's former owner, JL Properties Inc., decided to examine the potential of making its own biodiesel.

"They said, 'Hey, figure it out.' I'm a garbage man. I never knew I would be learning words like viscosity and transesterification and things like that," he remembered.

But with diesel prices at $5 a gallon at that point and a need to divert the cooking oil out of the company's waste stream, a case was made for the project.

Alaska Waste, now owned by Waste Connections Inc. of The Woodlands, Texas, is still fine-tuning its approach to producing biodiesel, which is currently a break-even proposition. The underlying advantage of the program, Welker said, is that the material is being recycled and kept away from the rest of the solid waste stream.

"Not only were we paying the cost of [disposing] it, seven pounds a gallon, but we had just dirty dumpsters, dirty environment, our trucks were getting dirty," he remembered.

These days, the oil is collected by specialized pump trucks and brought to the company's main facility in Anchorage, where the biodiesel plant is located. And that's where the magic of chemistry begins.

Some simply filter the used cooking oil and run their engines on that material, but the Alaska Waste plant actually uses a chemical process to change the composition of the used oil into biodiesel. That makes the fuel run more smoothly in the vehicles.

Alaska means cold, so the Alaska Waste plant was built to withstand colder temperatures, down to about minus 15 degrees. That compares to a typical biodiesel plant that's good until about 10 degrees above zero, Shrewsbury said.

Production still had to shut down for a couple of weeks the past couple of winters when temperatures fellow below minus 15. But the company had plans to install an insulated canvas tent over the site this year to keep the ambient temperature warmer and allow for continued production.

Trucks in Alaska Waste's fleet have run biodiesel mixes ranging from 99% to 5%, depending on the temperature. The company has to cut back on the biodiesel component of the fuel blend as temperatures drop because of gelling issues.

While Alaska Waste trucks use much of the finished product, some biodiesel is sold to a local petroleum distributor. And when the solid waste management company collects too much used oil to run through the system, that material is shipped down to the Pacific Northwest for use there.

Shrewsbury, for his part, relies on the expertise of other biodiesel experts in other parts of the country to help him out when necessary. But sometimes even they cannot relate to the conditions that exist in Alaska.

"It's really been one of those things that it's been a lot of on-the-job training and just personal passion to learn what I need to learn. Without anyone up there and without a big support group, I've kind of taken it all on," he said.

"I can reference the guys in the lower 48. But you have to have some understanding of the uniqueness of Alaska to really make it work," Shrewsbury said. "They give me a lot of support, but sometimes they just don't expect the cold temperatures."

w w w . w a s t e r e c y c l i n g n e w s . c o m

copyright 2012 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved.