BUL K PL A N T S Handling Bio at Your Rack
Fuel Oil News spoke with Brian Savage, president of Savage Associates about storing and handling biodiesel and Bioheat™ products
BY K E I T H RE ID Brian Savage
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HE USE OF BIO AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE FUELS CAN CREATE some handling issues throughout the distribution infra- structure and bulk plant and terminal operations are no
different in this regard. Pre-blended product at lower con- centrations should provide few issues. But some marketers are doing the blending themselves or using fuels with much higher concentrations. Fuel Oil News spoke with Brian Savage, president of Savage Associates, for a rundown of the major concerns with the bulk plant storage and blending of biodiesel and Bioheat™ fuels. Founded in 1938 and headquartered in Berkeley Heights, N.J., Savage Associates internationally pro- vides fueling infrastructure services to commercial, military and industrial customers.
FON: How much interest are you seeing in marketers getting B100 and blending their own biodiesel or Bioheat™ mixture?
APRIL 2012 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com
Savage: In some cases the fuel will already be blended by the time it arrives in a bulk plant, but marketers can make the business decision as long as the incentives work out properly to blend it themselves. To get going you would likely need a 20,000 gallon aboveground insulated tank, an immersion heater, auto controls, a recirculator, the supply line to the rack (4"), a 2" blending metering position to get you from B1 to B 20—a typical one like we just finished had four positions—and when you add things up including all the labor and concrete, you come out to about $500,000. We've probably put in about 21 facilities like that. However, you have Sun, and Sprague and Global blending at their racks and you can pick up a blended product for your own storage tanks and not spend that type of money. You have to have a large enough through-putting arrangement through your facility to actually spend that kind of money.