Green Energy Biofuel improves operations to accept bigger contracts, more food waste
While the U.S. market for green, renewable energy like liquid biofuels made from recycled fats, oils and greases may be uncertain right now thanks to shifting federal tax policies and a new administration, the future of green energy—and Green Energy Biofuel LLC—is certain, according to BioJoe Renwick, “head honcho” and co-owner of the South Carolina-based recycling company.
“Regardless of what the government is doing, we are contracting with new clients, placing new tanks, and growing capacity and scale every month,” Renwick said.
Recent developments at Green Energy Biofuel continue to help the firm fulfill its mission of being the Southeastern U.S.’s premier, vertically integrated organics-recycling company and service provider.
The company owns and operates a large-scale grease-processing plant in Warrenville, South Carolina, a facility that over the years has undergone—and continues to undergo—incremental improvements.
One of the more recent enhancements at the plant includes a complete system to accept and process trap grease.
“Our new trap-grease processing system includes a boiler, centrifuges and specialty equipment designed to recover marketable grease from the nastiest sludge imaginable,” Renwick said.
As part of the system, the company installed an 18,000-gallon cone-bottom secondary-process receiving tank—bringing total dedicated process tankage to over 150,000 gallons—and a concrete spill-containment transloading pad.
In addition to trap grease, the new tank provides Green Energy Biofuel the unique option to bring in volumes of waste streams with heavy solids and water from tank and railcar cleanings—just one of the many services the company offers its industrial clients.
“In my 18 years of doing this, I have not seen a tank like this before,” Renwick said. “It will serve as a key piece of equipment needed to easily deal with hard-to-accept and hard-to-process wastes.”
With the new grease-processing system and transload pad, Green Energy Biofuel can unload trucks in 10 minutes now.
“We unload the grease and separate the water,” he said, adding that the company is ready and permitted for 175,000 gallons of wastewater a week but at this time only handles a fraction of that throughput.
Green Energy Biofuel just had its centrifuges inspected and optimized as well to reduce wastewater output and electricity consumption while increasing the number of gallons processed a day, which Renwick said will “quickly add up to a stronger bottom line and throughput.”
It also installed a second, newly serviced air compressor.
Three years ago, the company bought a Depackaging Boss equipped to handle wet or dry food waste in industrial-scale, bulk quantities. The unit is designed to unwrap prepackaged, expired foods such as mayonnaise, salad dressing and similar goods to recover the oil and other organic materials. In February, Green Energy Biofuel set the first of two 34-yard trash compactors needed to reduce energy-intensive trips hauling the remaining inorganic materials offsite four to one, reducing costs and further lowering its environmental footprint.
“This will also allow us to focus on the output hauling of the amazing compost ingredients we generate with our depackager,” Renwick said.
Green Energy Biofuel also recently put in a new progressive cavity pump to convey solid food waste depackaged on-site into a larger transport tanker. This helps cut the company’s outbound organic-material loads by three times while also curbing daily cleanup needs to focus on production—not cleaning up messes.
These particular changes are important because Green Energy Biofuel recently signed a large contract to depackage over 800 tons per month of grocery-store waste, necessitating the additional process efficiencies.
Some of these organics go to ReSoil Compost, Green Energy Biofuel’s sister company and one of the load-bearing rungs on its vertically integrated recycling ladder. But being able to give this additional volume of food waste a second home has landed Green Energy Biofuel a different five-year contract to support another South Carolina compost operation with up to 400 tons per month of organics to complement their wood and yard waste. The deal led to Green Energy Biofuel purchasing another new truck to keep all the product moving, on top of a total fleet turnover last year.
In 2024, Green Energy Biofuel invested heavily in replacing its truck fleet, most of which are now new-model vehicles. “We’re talking 24 Peterbilt, Kenworth and Mack trucks—these are expensive vehicles,” he said. “That’s how we’re rolling. We have to have guaranteed uptime. There’s no time for downtime and no room for failure. We can’t afford to do it any other way.”
In addition, a rail-repair team has been fixing the plant’s upper rail spur to facilitate the company’s dedicated cleaning and transloading services. It will also give Green Energy Biofuel an additional 11-car holding capacity as well. “This will usher in a new era of efficiency for doing business on the rail,” Renwick said.
Why all this effort and investment in improvement? To secure more large-scale waste-handling contracts like another new deal recently signed with a well-known food manufacturer.
“By partnering with us, they are no longer paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to landfill their ‘waste,’” Renwick said. “Because of our technology, our process, the plant we built, our ability to also take wastewater and recover oil from it, we’re generating revenue for them and us. We give them an opportunity to win. No one in this industry is doing what we’re doing, and it shows. We are sustainability. We are the new style of doing business, of handling every waste and giving it the best second home. I need more food manufacturers to know we’re out there, and that we’re hungry. We’ve already got waste streams coming from some major ones, but we’re looking—and ready—for more who want to decrease their landfill costs and increase their revenue by getting paid for their waste. Where’s the next company that wants to have a million-dollar swing to their bottom line? Who wants to save a half-million on disposal fees and get half a million in rebates? Give us a call.”
-RKstandin.jpg)
_gif.gif)
