Biofuels Internship at Piedmont and School in North Carolina

January 10, 2011

Lately, wherever I go I seem to bring bad weather with me. When I was in southern California before Christmas it rained for a week straight and then when I get to North Carolina the city gets closed down for two or three days from snow and freezing rain. I don't know what it is but the angel on my shoulder must be wearing long underwear and a hooded parka. Hopefully now that I'm at Piedmont the trend has ended. Every Monday morning at 9:00 there's a full staff meeting which is followed by a production department meeting, I've been invited to attend both since I work in the production department. My schedule is Tuesday and Thursday, 10 hours per day. The first staff meeting was interesting, the environment is casual and easy going but still driven to stay on point and get things done. Everyone gets a voice and a chance to get their ideas out and also a chance to have those ideas talked down by management or anyone else. I got out of there around 11:30 and went back to Jims house. That night the storm came in and laid a nice quarter inch thick sheet of ice over everything under the sun, my car, the street, the trees, the sidewalk, nothing was spared. Since Tuesday is my first day I thought it prudent to be sure and get there. After taking 30 minutes to get the ice off the windshield and the two side windows I braved the icey roads and make the 45 minute drive in about an hour and a half, getting to the plant around 8:30, great, first day and I'm late. The place was a ghost town, not a single living soul. So I figure people are struggling to deal with the roads and settle down in the conference room with a copy from the company library of Lyle's book "Biodiesel Power" to kill some time. Lyle is Lyle Estill, the president of Piedmont Biofuels Industrial, LLC, i.e. the plant. Super nice guy, dedicated, driven, passionate about biodiesel and the not so underground movement that has come up around it and he's willing to share his knowledge and vision with anyone willing to listen, or read. Around 9:00 I email the other production department guys using my new Motorola Dick Tracey phone and learn that they aren't coming in until the roads improve, which isn't going to be happening anytime soon so I email back that I'll wait until 10:00 or so then head home. A little while later a couple of the organic farm interns drive in to check their emails from the computer in the corner of the room and then go to work to check the ice damage to their crops ... I'm thinking to myself "been there done that" as I watch them walk off toward the gardens. I sink back into the comfy sofa and go back to the book but I'm soon dozing off, in and out of a lite sleep and the book keeps falling into my lap. A little around 11:00 I call Jim and discover that they took a "ice day" and everyone's at the house, so I decide to leave. I have my own copy of the book somewhere in the car and as comfy as the conference room sofa is I figure being with Jim and his family will be much more comfy, I put the book back in it's place on the shelf and head out.
The next day, Wednesday, I meet a pleasant young woman named Jennie who is helping manage a "housing situation slash arrangement" which has been named Oilseed. The term is used because one of the lots was farmed to raise an oilseed crop which was then going to be pressed for the oil to use as a fuel, similar to what Jack is doing down at Crescent Moon Organic Farm in Sopchoppy. I'm not sure what the details are and they aren't really important at the moment, the bottom line is there is an old farmhouse and two manufactured homes on three lots back in the woods on the side of a hill, all next to each other. For a nominal rate the rooms are available to students, interns, employees, etc. Jennie helps manage the rooms but the utilities are split between the occupants. Off in the distance on the top of the hill is the farmhouse, which is called the "bighouse" where Jennie and other "young people" are living. Nothing is said but we're both thinking the same thing, the needs of the 49 year old intern and the needs of the younger interns/students etc are not the same, we'll check out the bighouse last. We proceed to the middle house which is completely empty, do a walk through and I'm thinking boy this place is cold. They have the heat turned off and the place doesn't capture much sun, giving it a very unlived in feeling. I decide against it because I don't want to foot the bill to heat the entire place when I'm just renting a single room, and just to the end of May to boot. The last house is known as the "lower house" because it's the lowest on the hillside, in a clear area with a south exposure catching lots of sun. Living there is an attractive young woman named Moya who used to work at Piedmont. Hmmm, I'm thinking .. former employee ... this could be historically interesting and enlightening at the same time. I recognize her name from looking through the Piedmont website, she used to run the collection department, driving around in a big single axle tank truck collecting the waste vegetable oil from restaurants. When I first spoke with Jennie over the phone I explained that I was 49, a bookworm, an intern at Piedmont and student at the junior college. I'm looking for a quiet environment, all I need is kitchen access, a warm room, low noise level and internet access. As we walk to the lower house Jennie explains that Moya used to work at Piedmont and since I was interning there she wanted to have a "roommate compatibility meeting" to avoid any conflicts. She knocks on the door and Moya greets us and politely invites us in. After Jennie introduces us we shake hands and give each other a "nice to meet you" and then she turns to begin the tour of the house. The first thing I notice is a wood burning stove in the living room against the outer wall near a window. The stack has been disconnected and it looks more like a part of the surroundings than a heating appliance, which I think is exactly the job of a wood burning stove. I don't mention anything but the second thing I notice is there's no TV and I'm thinking .... quiet environment, check! Moya shows us the rooms and both her and Jennie explain some history of the house, the landlord, the past lease arrangement and other pertinent details, like why there's a past roommate's belonging's piled high in the room I want. Recently, like around November the house had been filled to max capacity but the lease was scheduled to expire at the end of the year and negotiations to renew had not been completed. As a result most of the occupants made other arrangements and moved out, then at the last minute, like December 15th, the owner and the management company sign the paperwork and the next year is set in stone. After Moya explains that "so and so should be back sometime to get her stuff" we wander back to the living room where we're just standing around. Moya explains that she and Jennie have already talked and she understands pretty much what I'm looking for and that it all sounds like it could work out well between us. I agree and mention that I noticed the absence of a TV, which is ok with me and that I gave it all up years ago. She smiles and makes a comment about the lack of desire for television, something about how people need to get out more and interact with each other, not gel in front of the tube where they're exposed to all the "social suggestions" in the TV programming ... or something like that. I mention that I spend a lot of time reading and browsing the internet, which can turn a person into a conspiracy theorist ... and then look her in the eye and say, "Which I am". She smiles, says something along the line of "right on, me too" and offers up a high five. But I'm lost in space by this time, too dumbfounded by the fact we have this in common and I completely miss the wind up and the impending pitch on the high five .... swoooooosh, the whole idea goes right over my head. Moya is standing there motionless with her right hand in the air, the situation has turned awkwardly quiet, I'm standing there speechless and my mind is slowly tuning into the fact that she has dropped her hand and she's making a comment about how I won't give her a high five. My mind is still in a blurr as I start to raise my hand and blurt out some babble about being "not hip, more of a square peg". As my hand goes up she winds up for a repeat, hears what I'm saying and as the pitch is being released gets a weird confused look on her face, like "What did he just say?". Smaaackkkk, the high five is complete and we both smile, a new friendship has been formed. I'm completely self conscious about my conservative, square peggedness and remember how Dad used to say in response to someone raising their fist and shouting "right on, right on" ... he would say, "right arm, right arm", I guess his way of saying, "whatever", lol. But this is different, in my mind there's definitely a connection forming. She says something indicating her acceptance of me as a roommate and the conversation turns to the personal habits department. She heads into the kitchen and explains how she found the former roommate situation kind of frustrating when it came to the kitchen. She likes to keep a neat kitchen, but when the place was full of busy (mostly young) people it didn't turn out too well. I can imagine I tell her. I'm seeing images in my head of her being constantly pissed at her roommates for not being tidy. Since being let go from Piedmont she has been staying with her boyfriend a lot, he has a place in town, and she hasn't put any big effort into it, yet. On closer examinatin the kitchen looks neat and orderly but the trash and the recycling needs to be taken out and there are signs of abandoned kitchen wares from the former roommates. We're in the country, taking the trash out is a semi-major undertaking which consists of keeping the paper, the plastic, the different metals and the glass all segregated etc, and then bagging everything up and throwing it in the back of her truck, then driving it to the county recycling center. I'm sure all the roommates were completely tuned into that procedure .... right! She askes firmly if I can just clean up after myself, that she's isn't trying to make a big deal out of it or be the heavy but that if she doesn't mention it, well, you know how that goes. Ok I'm thinking, she wants a clean kitchen, she didn't say please and the former situation i.e. the kitchen was a real pisser for her. This is important to her. She insists she isn't trying to be an asshole about it. I tell her no problem, I was raised in a family with a bunch of strong women and I am totally dialed into what she is getting at. She has no idea how true that is. At that instant I immediately post a permanent reminder note in the back of my head. I tell her there will be no problem with the kitchen. She accepts my answer and then Jennie and I leave to take care of the final arrangements at the bighouse. Friday night I moved in. Cool.
On Thursday morning I started the internship proper. In the previous days as I was walking around the plant taking care of all the paper work details I noticed a semi trailer getting unloaded. Pallet after pallet of four 55 gallon drums each, double stacked into the trailer, all of them filled with used sunflower oil. Some food plant had flushed their system with this oil and then put it in the drums and had to get rid of it. Guess where it landed. So the plan for the day is for the forklift to bring the drums to the recieving area, which is a large tank farm of four big multi-thousand gallon vertical storage tanks and all the associated piping, pump(s) and valve assemblies, all enclosed within a three foot high concrete block wall. On the north end of the enclosure there's a large metal box, about four feet wide, eight feet long and maybe three feet deep. Inside this trough is a V shaped metal screen with a 4" reciever port on one end. This is the main recieving area for the oil from the collection truck. The truck pulls in alongside the trough, the 4" drain hose on the truck is attached to the reciever port and the truck tank, the vent on top of the truck tank is opened, the valves are set to make sure the oil is going to the proper storage tank (this is actually item one), the main reciever pump is turned on and then the drain valve on the truck tank is partially opened. The last two steps are critical because the tank on the truck will gravity drain faster than the pump can get the oil into the storage tank. Also connected to the main pump via another valve arrangement is a device nicknamed "the stinger". It's just a 5' long 2-1/2" diameter tube with a on/off valve and about 35 feet of hose. This is what we use to suck the sunflower oil out of the drums. First make sure the valve arrangement is what you want, i.e. the oil is going to go into the correct storage tank. Open the drum by removing the bung (a threaded plug in the drain hole), insert the stinger, turn on the pump and open the valve. When the oil level gets to the bottom you can hear the stinger make a loud sucking sound as it takes oil, then air, then oil ... at this point the drum is as empty as it's goiong to get. Remove the stinger and put it into the next drum and then carry the empty drum over to the trough and place it drain hole down so the last of the oil will empty into the system. When the drum is truly empty carrry it another 100 feet or so to a large pile of empties and place it on top. Return to stinger location and repeat until hundreds of drums are emptied. Welcome to the production department. So this is how I spend my Thursday, ten hours of draining sunflower oil out of say maybe 75 drums. I felt it for the next three days. Not only that, the waste veggie oil has a very distinct smell, meaning the shit stinks and the word is that the smell does NOT come out of the clothes, so some dedicated work clothes are in order and I mean right now because it won't take long for the smell to get into the car .... forever. On Sunday I found a Tractor Supply and bought two pairs of coveralls and then a Walmart for a cheap pair of work boots. I carry a large trash bag in the trunk and change at the back of the car each time, then wash the clothes in the company washing machine over the weekend.
When I started on Monday, January 10 I caught wind of a problem they had been working on for about a month. In the process of making biodiesel a large quantity of methanol is mixed with a catalyst (potassium hydroxide) and then mixed with the heated waste veggie oil. After about 24 hours the mixture separates into approximately 20% glycerol on the bottom and 80% dirty biodiesel on top. The glycerol is then pumped into a tank, heated and the methanol that's still in solution is boiled off and condensed for reuse. At Piedmont all of this is done on a large scale and the condenser water is cooled with a chiller. A chiller is an industrial machine that uses the refrigeration cycle to make cold water. An air conditioner uses the refrigeration cycle to make cool air and a refrigerator uses the cycle to keep its contents cold relative to the outside temperature. So now you know what the refrigeration cycle is, lol. Anyway, the chilled water system was down because the pump had failed. At some time in the past an employee named "bonehead" had perhaps drilled a hole in a pipe to mount a sensor and the drill bit had broke off inside the pipe ... and they didn't say anything. Then for who knows how long the bit just sat there, or moved slowly through the piping system until if found the impeller of the pump. The drill bit is small but made of very hard tool steel and the impeller is almost surely made of soft aluminum. The sound would be something like a knife in a garbage disposal full of rocks, except you can't reach in and take it out, it would go on and on. By the time someone heard the noise, then figured out where the noise was coming from and then remembered where the power switch is located and then walked over and turned the thing off, well it's all over for the pump impeller and possibly the entire pump assembly. So then you shut everything down, drain the cooling fluid from the system and filter it to get all the little impeller pieces and for sure get that drill bit out of the system. When the system is empty you can remove the bad pump assembly and replace it with a "ready to go" spare or with a new one, costing in the multiple hundreds of Federal Reserve Notes. Or you can take the only one you have and take it apart and overhaul it, replacing all the broken parts and double checking everything to make sure it will work when it goes back in. Of course you have to order the pump parts first, from a place called "far far away", and then of course they send you the replacement materials a little here, a little there, some come in on Friday, some on Saturday, some on Monday. That's how and why the system was down for a month. This is also why plant managers have gray hair, bags under their eyes and lots of medical records. On Thursday while I was dealing with the sunflower oil they were installing the overhauled pump.
The following Tuesday I figured would be spent finishing up the sunflower oil, but instead I get a new experience. I learned how to clean a device called a filter press. A filter press is an assembly of filters, think of the filter that's on your home air conditioning system, around 20 of them arranged horizontally with a cap on each end. They are placed inside a rack or press which has a hydraulic ram on one end that squeezes them all together under very high pressure. Each filter frame is a large heavy duty plastic plate around three feet square and slightly over an inch thick. The actual filter element is in the inside of the frame, about two inches in from the outside edge, that is to say the frame is about two inches wide all the way around and the middle area is open where the two filter elements are held in place. The elements are pressed into a groove around the inside perimeter of the opening, similar to a window screen in a metal frame. In addition there’s a black rubber gasket mounted in a groove in the frame wall on one face of each element. So what does the filter press do, you may ask. Well, let's back up a little. When making biodiesel the final step is called the wash cycle. After the glycerol is drained off and the methanol has been recovered, the resulting dirty biodiesel still has some free fatty acids in solution, some of the catalyst and other residue that has to be cleaned out to meet specification. To do this the fuel is pumped into a tank on the other side of the facility, one stage away from going into the fuel terminal for shipping. The small scale backyard method is to wash the fuel with water and the bubbling action from an acquarium bubbler. In this method the water is gently introduced in with the fuel and then the bubbler turned on. The bubble forms and rises and then leaves the water layer and enters the biodiesel layer. At that point the bubble is air and a very thin film of water between the air and the biodiesel. As the bubble rises through the biodiesel the water bonds to the free fatty acids in solution and then carries them to the top where they form a soapy scummy layer of wash water. Typically, to meet specification this has to be done three times which produces a lot of wash water that has to be disposed of. The filter press in conjuction with a substance called filter aid which I think is magnesium sulfate replaces the wash water method. Once the biodiesel is pumped into the new tank on the terminal side a sample is taken to determine the level of free fatty acids and this with the fuel volume is entered into an equation to calculate how much filter aid to use. We carry the bags of filter aid up to the top platform near the top of the storage tanks, open the large heavy lid and dump it all in. The filter aid is a very fine powder, like baby powder but more granular, not slippery. The valves in the piping system are set to allow the mixture to continuously recirculate to get a complete mix of the filter aid and the biodiesel. The filter aid does what the water was doing, it bonds to the free fatty acids that are floating around in solution with the biodiesel. Upon a complete mix the valves are reset to allow the mixture to run through the filter press. As the fluid flows through the many filters the filter aid and free fatty acids that are bonded to it are entrapped in the filter elements and start to clog things up in the filter bank. This is how the filter aid is designed to work, as it clogs the filter press the filter aid itself becomes a filter agent catching ever more of the stuff. After a certain time interval another sample is taken to measure the ffa (free fatty acid) level. If the level is too high we simply wait while more of the filter aid reacts with more of the ffa's. When the ffa level is comfortably within specification then the finished biodiesel is pumped into a second storage tank where it is held before going to the terminal for delivery. When all the biodiesel is in the second tank the inlet to the filter press is isolated from the piping system via the valve arrangement and then compressed air is fed into the inlet of the filter press pushing the last remaining biodiesel out of it and into the waiting second tank. This last procedure also dries the filter aid which is like a fine powder cake between each filter section. The filter aid goes in white and comes out brown. The filter press is pulled apart and the filter aid cake is removed from between each section and dumped into a mobile trough that is parked below it. The cake still has a trace amount of biodiesel and methanol which will combust if the temperature gets above the flashpoint of around 300 degrees F., a very real possibility in the summer, so I’m told. So, as a fire preventative we add water to the trough and turn the cake into a wet mud, then it's carried by the fork lift and emptied into the dumpster out back. The residual cake then has to be wiped away from the face of each filter element before it can be used again on the next batch. Working at a relaxed leisurely pace it takes me about three hours to completely clean the filter press.