Filed under: Biodiesel, Manufacturing/Plants, Vegetable Oil
eBay find of the day: own a biodiesel refinery for just $1.275 million
All you need is a constant supply of canola oil, soybeans or chicken fat and you can produce 1.3 million gallons of biodiesel per year with just a click of your mouse. This auction on eBay ends early this morning, so don't let it get away. Look at the potential. Production cost is just 38 cents a gallon, and the seller says the plant will pay for itself in less than two years with current diesel prices government subsidies. To be honest, I'm curious about this venture. How much land is needed for the operation? How many employees are required to keep it going. How much water and other utilities are needed? What would I call my biodiesel fuel?
[Source: eBay]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Howard Lee Harkness 11:17AM (2/27/2007)
With all that going for it, why is it for sale?
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Howard Lee Harkness 11:30AM (2/27/2007)
I did a search on 'biodiesel' on ebay, and this did not turn up, even in expired listings. You might want to post the listing number (?).
However, I did find a number of smaller home-biodiesel production plants for $1000-$4000, and one with a single 1-cent bid on it (shipping cost not specified).
Biodiesel is reasonably easy to produce, requiring no hard-to-find chemicals or machinery, so I would think that anybody who knows enough about what he is doing would want to build his refinery from scratch, not buy a turnkey facility. Anybody *not* familiar with the process would do well to get a $1000-$4000 startup plant and use it to gain experience before scaling up to commercial production.
There is more to commercial biodiesel production than just mixing chemicals; that's the easy part. The hard part is dealing with bureaucrats who want to make small-scale biodiesel refineries illegal.
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Mike Magda 11:45AM (2/27/2007)
Follow the link at the bottom of the story, found just under [Source: eBay] to reach the listing. I see it didn't sell this morning. Enjoy.
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Jack S. 12:00PM (2/27/2007)
That price is off the radar. I thought it was for the entire plant including the land, etc.
1.2M for just the processing equipment is ridiculously high given the suggested capacity. Their figures for cost/gallon are HIGHLY suspect as well at $0.38. If it were that low then you would have a license to print money provided other transport and labor costs could be controlled.
There are entire chemical plants for sale and any engineer capable of using the out of the box kit is capable of acquiring the plethora of used reactors, plumbing, pumps, etc. available on the open market to do the same.
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NorCalCars 12:07PM (2/27/2007)
How do you find a constant supply of Chicken fat?
Wonder how much of this oil it would take to produce 1.3 million gallons of biodiesel?
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