Tyson to build $126M biofuels plant

Facility will produce biodiesel from chicken fat

BATON ROUGE — Tyson Foods is expected to announce today that it will build a $126 million biodiesel plant in Louisiana, producing fuel from chicken fat.

The meat processing company is expanding its presence in the state to include the biodiesel operation, said Don Pierson, assistant secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, but Tyson wouldn't allow him to announce the site for the plant yet.

"It's a good news story," Pierson said. "I can confirm that it is a Louisiana project but Tyson asked me to hold off on the specific location. I can release it (Wednesday)."

More commonly made from soybean oil, biodiesel can mix at any amount with petro-diesel, and unlike with ethanol in most cars, diesel engines need few or no modifications to burn it. Biodiesel can be transported in pipes while ethanol can't, and has 3.2 units of energy for every one unit used to make it.

It's also the only biofuel currently made in Louisiana. Allegro Biodiesel will produce about 4 million gallons from soybean oil at a plant in Pollock this year. But production there has slowed, as have plans for two other biodiesel plants near New Orleans, mostly because soybean prices have skyrocketed this year from growing food demand, and the crop's acreage being overtaken by corn for ethanol.

Today, about 90 percent of all biodiesel fuel stock is soybean oil, but that's likely to change. As the largest meat processing company in the world, Tyson has 2.3 billion pounds of fat to use as feedstock, and is pushing the biofuels industry to explore use of cheap animal fats.

As more meat companies contribute their fat to the fuel cause, it will increase the national biodiesel supply and lower cost to consumers.

Pierson said the Tyson biodiesel plant will supply 45 permanent jobs with an annual payroll of $4 million.

Construction is rumored to be near a deepwater port. Jeff Webster, senior vice president of renewable products at Tyson, said "It's a brownfield site within a chemical refining complex overall," according to a story on cleantech.com, a Web site for the Cleantech Network LLC, which promotes using technology for more environmentally friendly business.

During the legislative session in May, Baton Rouge lawmakers sought funds to prepare two sites near the Port of Baton Rouge for ethanol or biodiesel plant locations. One ethanol plant is permitted near the Baton Rouge port.

The five deepwater ports in Louisiana are in Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, LaPlace and Braithwaite. Officials at the Lake Charles and Baton Rouge ports were the only ones reached Tuesday night who'd say they knew of no biodiesel plant.

Tyson announced in June that it would build its first biodiesel plant along with Syntroleum, a Tulsa, Okla., company specializing in synthetic and renewable fuels.

The company said then that it expected the plant to produce about 78 million gallons per year of renewable synthetic fuel from 74 million gallons per year of feedstock beginning in 2010. Construction of the facility was expected to start in 2008.

Tyson and Syntroleum's joint venture, called Dynamic Fuels LLC, was formed to produce synthetic fuels targeting the renewable diesel, jet, and military fuel markets.

In the company's announcement, it cited Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport as a possible major customer, since the B-52 has been retrofitted to run on biodiesel.

source: theadvertiser