20/11/2007 (The Oregonian), Port of Grays Harbor - Huge pipes glint against a dull coastal sky, coiling from storage tanks standing six stories high to reactors to distillers to yet more tanks. Biodiesel - At a Washington state plant, all the oils used to make nonfossil fuel raise their own environmental red flags.

Everything about Imperium Renewable's brand-new biodiesel refinery is massive. Its raw materials arrive on ocean-going barges. Its on-site storage totals 18 million gallons. And it can churn out 100 million gallons of pure biodiesel annually -- enough to fuel TriMet's 532 buses for 15 years -- making it the biggest biodiesel plant in the country.

Seattle-based Imperium says the industrial scale of the plant and its location in a deep-water port are key strengths, allowing the company to supply surging West Coast biodiesel demand at the lowest prices. Imperium plans to issue stock and build three more megaplants with the proceeds by early 2009, in Hawaii, Argentina and on the East Coast.

But the big plants require industrial-scale feeding, too, and that's the potential rub.

Imperium expects to use combinations of canola, palm and soybean oil to make its biodiesel, all of which raise environmental concerns. Canola requires a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, which produces nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. Increased demand for palm oil, widely used in food and for biodiesel in Europe, has been tied to tropical forest clearing and orangutan slaughter in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Midwestern soybeans are a basic food stock, and they take a lot of land to produce. Soybeans yield about 40 gallons of oil per acre, Imperium says, and each gallon of vegetable oil makes about a gallon of biodiesel. So making enough soybean oil to meet the Grays Harbor plant's annual appetite would take 2.5 million acres, enough to cover the Willamette Valley's floor with 800,000 acres left over.

Mixing and heating
The scale is big at the $78 million Grays Harbor plant, but Imperium's recipe for making biodiesel is simple: Mix virgin vegetable oil with methanol, also known as wood alcohol. Add a catalyst such as lye. Heat up the mix. Voila! you have biodiesel and glycerin, which can used in soaps, cosmetics and fake fireplace logs.

Imperium recaptures almost all the methanol, then starts the cycle again. Its technology allows the plant to switch between feedstocks, and the company says a secret waterless process to flush out trace contaminants gives it a proprietary edge.

Despite doubts about potential overcapacity in the biodiesel industry, Imperium is looking good at this point. Its investors include heavy hitters such as Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen. It drew both of Washington's U.S. senators to the August grand opening, a coup considering biodiesel tax breaks are up for renewal next year. It will benefit from record-high oil prices -- biodiesel's competitor, conventional diesel, has soared to $3.70 at the pump.