Biodiesel and Ethanol Investing

nashuatelegraph.com, a division of New Hampshire publication The Telegraph, reports that New Hampshire’s first biodiesel plant, Batchelder Biodiesel Refineries, held its grand opening last month. The facility, now ready to commence operations, can take as much as 250,000 gallons of used restaurant grease each year and turning it into fuel that can fill the tanks of diesel-powered trucks and cars. In contrast to many facilities, this one may prove quite profitable, as it uses well-established technology and is small and frugal enough with much of its equipment used instead of new and only needs one full-time employee. This should help it to sidestep the credit crunch. It has anticipated output of a quarter million gallons per year of biodiesel with a one-week turnaround time from receipt of brown grease to shipment of processed biodiesel. This, combined with another planned nearby facility, keep a half-million gallons of the otherwise unuseable brown grease from being dumped into landfills annually and keep hundreds of thousand of gallons of diesel from being imported. It may be a drop in the bucket compared to America’s demand for 60 million gallons of biodiesel per year, but its frugality and other beneficial practices, such as using by-product glycerol to heat the grease, could prove as a model for other refineries to come.