Peak Oil: Meet Pork Fat Biodiesel!

US pork producing company Seaboard Foods has officially started up, and delivered its first product shipment of pork fat biodiesel the second week of April.

High Plains is colocated with Seaboard’s pork processing facility to more easily use pork fat. The High Plains facility was designed to use multiple feedstocks, but Eaheart said anything other than pork fat will depend on its availability and market price. Pork fat is the plant’s feedstock of choice for now.

Eaheart said the biodiesel facility is part of Seaboard’s plan to be a fully vertically integrated company. Seaboard owns everything from the farms on up, he said, so it “makes sense” to begin producing biodiesel with pork fat from the processing plant. “Biodiesel adds to the element of using everything,” he said. BiodieselMag

The combination of biofuels production with other processes will become more common, as industry discovers many previously wasted forms of energy. Previous articles at Al Fin have discussed the conversion of animal waste to biofuels. Garbage and sewage sludge are being converted into bio-energy in more locations every year. Agricultural and forest waste are becoming valuable bio-energy resources. The trend is from waste to energy.

The sooner governments understand that it is best to let the markets work, the sooner they will get away from destructive and counter-productive mandates and tariffs, such as the ones that have put bio-ethanol in the US into a no-win limbo state.