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Dean Price is shown in an area where he planted canola near the Red Birch Market in Bassett Forks. |
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
By SHAWN HOPKINS - Bulletin Staff Writer
For Dean Price, owner of Red Birch Convenience Stores, canola oil is more than something you’d find on the shelf at a supermarket.
It’s a self-contained local energy industry waiting to happen, and Price thinks he has a system to jump-start it.
He plans to work with local farmers to grow and buy canola seed, turn the oil from the seed into biodiesel fuel at a facility at his Red Birch Convenience Store at Bassett Forks, and sell it to truckers across the road at his diesel pumps.
“We grow it, we make it, and we sell it,” he said.
Price has put up signs touting his plan at the station, and to prove how easy the Virginia canola strain he is using is to grow, he planted a patch of it there. When showing it off recently, he picked up one of the leaves and ate it to demonstrate how natural it is.
“I put it on my salad,” he said.
Price and his partners started Red Birch Energy to produce biodiesel about a year ago. He said several factors got him interested in the project, not the least of which is America’s dependence on foreign oil.
With foreign oil, 70 cents of every dollar goes to countries the United States is in conflict with, Price said. In fact, the American consumer pays for such conflicts twice, both in military spending and in the higher fuel prices they cause.
But for every dollar spent on local biodiesel, he said, 90 cents will stay in the area, and the rest will go to taxes.
Price also said biodiesel is better for the environment, which is attractive to him because he has children, and “we want to leave this place better than we found it.”
Also, he said, if more people follow his lead, it could help create a local biodiesel economy. Price said he has signed on about 40 farmers to grow a total of 1,200 acres of Virginia canola.
“It wasn’t really a hard sell,” he said, because farmers are looking for a new crop to replace tobacco. Price said land that is now fallow could be used to produce energy.
Biodiesel also is supported by the federal government, Price said. He expects to get a $1.00 per gallon federal tax credit.
What Price expects to sell will be a 20 percent mix of biodiesel and 80 percent regular diesel. It will be produced through a chemical process in six large plastic tanks in a facility near the convenience store.
He said he expects to start within 30 to 45 days, producing 1,000 gallons of biodiesel a day and being able to produce more in the future. Because the canola crop will not be in until June, production will start with waste oil from restaurants, which also can be made into biodiesel.
Price said that because of the money he will save on costs such as transportation, he should be able to sell the biodiesel for between five and 10 cents less a gallon than regular diesel and still improve profits.
Regular diesel was selling Sunday at the Red Birch for $3.29 per gallon.
Price’s facility is being built by Derrick Gortman, owner of Gortman Biofuel of Lexington, N.C. It is the second biodiesel facility Gortman has built, and he estimated that when completed, it would have taken eight weeks in total to construct.
Gortman explained that, through a chemical process, glycerin is removed from the canola oil, leaving behind oil that can be used as fuel.
The process, from start to finish, takes about five hours, he said, and the plant could be managed by one well-trained person.
Gortman said biodiesel appears to be the wave of the future, at least until the country switches to electric engines. It is cleaner than normal diesel, he said, claiming it produces 78 percent fewer emissions.
Right now, Gortman admitted, the government incentives are necessary to make biodiesel production profitable. However, he said, that would change if “more people come on board” and it becomes a major industry. |
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