Industrial Evolution. Lyle Estill

at Piedmont Biofuels. That is either a reflection of our craving for community, or of the fact that we have a strip of safe pavement.”

      As the biodiesel plant progressed we were slammed to a halt by water pressure. We knew that we would have to install a sprinkler system for our high hazard work, but were caught off guard by the fact that we did not have enough water pressure to operate a sprinkler system.

      After all, our abandoned industrial park was at the end of the water line on the edge of town. We only had enough water pressure to sprinkle two small rooms. Increasing pressure meant erecting a water tower. Which was a $350,000 surprise. By the time we encountered this problem, our money supply was running low and we had no way to pull it off.

      So we wedged our reactors, and our high-hazard work into two small rooms in Building 3, and we built an underground pipeline that crossed the street. Whew. Good thing we had an extra building. Suddenly biodiesel would require both Building 2 and Building 3.

      Upon doing so we hit another formidable snag. Building 3 was located very close to our property line. In order to pull off our plan, we would have needed to locate our tank farm, which included ten thousand gallons of methanol storage, right next to the adjoining property. We were hemmed in.

      So we bought the surrounding property. That moved us from three and half acres up to a fourteen-acre campus. After closing, we ripped down a large section of fence, and built our tank farm.

      As part of our cash recycling efforts, we sold Building 4 to Jacques and Wendy. They had a brisk trade in fabrics and imported art and antiques and Building 4 became their warehouse.

      On one end of the campus we were giving it our all building a biodiesel plant. On the other end various businesses were popping up. Screech moved his hydroponics lettuce operation in. Piedmont Biofarm started farming the vacant lots that surrounded our buildings. Tracy Kondracki moved her “Green Bean Accounting” business into an empty office in Building 1. And the Abundance Foundation, which is driven by my wife Tami snatched up another empty office.

      A stage in the lawn brought on rock concerts and festivals, and provided a venue for politicians to speechify about our low carbon future. Eventually Piedmont finished its office space, complete with a gorgeous second story porch, and moved into the new Control Room, where most of us still work today.

      We found a room in Building 3 that could be converted to office space, and before the paint was dry it was rented to Cecellia as an office for her work with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission.

      We came for the biodiesel. Baskets and produce and bookkeeping and lettuce were ancillary. Piedmont Biofuels accidentally became the anchor tenant of what would emerge as an eco-industrial park. What we failed to understand at the time, as we were bringing our chemical plant to life, was that we were imitating nature, and accidentally diversifying. As Piedmont Biofuels lumbered along, trying to find its way into the world of a cleaner burning renewable fuel, an eco-industrial park sprung up around it. Before we knew it there were seven unique businesses inside the fence.

      Farmers were coming to drop off their wares. Some filled up with fuel in the yard.

      Allen came along wanting some biodiesel as a feedstock for his bio-pesticide business. We had an empty floor on our mezzanine, so we designed and built a precision blending operation for him. That went well, and he eventually took over Building 4. On one side of the street we work hard to avoid emulsions. We then sell product to Eco Blend so that it can be emulsified. One side of the street hates free fatty acids. The other side of the street sells them for a living.

      I should note that as the real estate all around us was filling up with tenants, and projects that were largely focused on sustainability, we were mostly oblivious. At the time we did not see ourselves as an escort into the low carbon future. We were merely building a biodiesel plant. Welding every weld and fitting every pipe ourselves.

      Piedmont Biofuels suffers from an acute case of “Do It Yourself Syndrome,” and because we had designed and built a handful of biodiesel projects, we found ourselves squarely in the design-build business for other people. Years ago we did a complete biodiesel plant on a trailer. Which led to a second version that became our Clean Technology Demonstration rig, which we drag around to various venues to demonstrate biodiesel production.

      The North Carolina Zoological Park liked the notion of a biodiesel plant on a trailer so they hired us to build one for them. UNC Pembroke liked the notion too, so they bought one. As did Clemson University, and Hill Town Biodiesel Cooperative, as did Montana State University. By the time a principal at Washington High School decided to write a grant to build a biodiesel plant on a school bus, we had shipped a bunch of mobile units.

      When the financial crash hit in the fall of 2008, our design-build group was staring at a year’s worth of work, and delivering projects profitably. As the recession deepened, the work grew. Small-scale biodiesel, based on feedstock anomalies flourished, as the giant biodiesel plants — and the industry itself — began to falter.

      We found ourselves offering engineering assistance to seed crushing facilities, and spending almost as much time making 3D models of how to move liquids around as we spent making biodiesel.

      At the same time we entered the research and development business. Greg and David had invested a massive amount of time and energy in the development of a cavitational reactor for biodiesel production, which they were positioning for small scale plants, and Greg took his enthusiasm for the learning edge and hired on to a research project involving the creation of heterogeneous catalyst.

      At the time Rachel was our quality manager. She shepherded us through the BQ-9000 accreditation process, which is a quality standard awarded by the National Biodiesel Board. We were the smallest biodiesel plant in the land to make the grade. Rachel joined Greg in his quest for science projects and we found ourselves building a second lab and entering the world of contract research and analytics.

      In the spring of 2007, with some assistance from the Biofuels Center of North Carolina, we embarked on the creation of our second chemical plant, which we referred to as our “bio-refinery.” In the course of creating biodiesel, a cocktail of co-products is created that largely has no market at all. Our bio-refinery was designed to sort that cocktail into its component parts, such that it could be turned into cash.

      We turned on the bio-refinery in the fall of 2008, but we could not get it working properly until the summer of 2009. Once again we were a year late.

      But by the fall of 2009, when the biodiesel industry had all but collapsed, our bio-refinery was spinning like a top, and we were able to bring in co-products from other biodiesel plants — those which were mostly closed, or idle, or waiting for the economy to turn. At the time we could land co-product feedstock for about a penny a pound, and after sorting it out in the bio-refinery, we were fetching thirteen cents a pound. Refining, it seemed, was a profitable undertaking.

      Another important thing that occurred in the spring of 2009 was that the Board of Directors of the Piedmont Biofuels Coop elected to “become one” with Piedmont Biofuels Industrial. The Coop was a grassroots effort that was operating out of a double wide, collecting used vegetable oil from area restaurants, and spinning it into fuel for its members.

      It was losing money at an amazing rate, and had run afoul of its landlord, its creditors, its neighbors, the local fire marshal, and was about to face the EPA in a showdown it had no hope of winning. Rather than letting a beloved institution fail, the Board decided to “land it in the Hudson,” by merging it with Industrial.

      When the Coop and Industrial became one, we ended up with a soap maker, who was happily making soap out of crude biodiesel glycerin. And we ended up with a rainwater collection business that was largely concerned with marrying the ubiquitous containers of chemical handling to homeowners attempting to combat our increasing drought conditions.

      By the fall of 2009 we had been making biodiesel for seven years. We had used almost every feedstock imaginable, except human fat, and despite our labors, we had never made any money producing fuel. I’m guessing we had lost money on every gallon ever produced, and we had produced well over a million gallons of fuel.

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