Biofirm in running for esteemed North American prize

A Prince George company developing a method to turn pulp mill waste into biodiesel is in the running in one of North Americas largest technology business-idea competitions.
Bluekey Energy Inc. is among 30 companies to have advanced to the semi-finals in this years New Ventures B.C. competition and will know by Sept. 4 if it will be among the 10 finalists competing for a $120,000 first prize.
Even if Bluekey fails to win the competiton, established in 2000 by Simon Fraser Universitys business school, chief executive officer Theo Warkentin says it will still have been a worthwhile exercise simply in terms of sharpening business skills.
"It forces you to write down everything," he said. "A lot of times, when you run a small business, you dont really take the time to put everything onto paper that you need to, and by answering certain questions that have to be answered by a certain deadline, you make sure you get things done on time."
That said, the prize money would come in handy.
"Our legal bills are monstrous because weve got patents in 45 countries," Warkentin commented. "And we still have to come up with 50 per cent of all the research and development that we do even though National Research Council has been nice enough to give us $112,000."
In addition to the prize money offered for the main competition - second place earns $63,000 and third place brings in $37,000 - Bluekey has also submitted entries for the $40,000 B.C. Hydro sustainability prize, the $20,000 B.C. Bioenergy Network price and the $20,000 B.C. Innovation Council economic impact prize.
The company remains in the process of refining an on-site system to convert so-called "soap," a byproduct of the pulp milling process, into biodiesel good enough to be burned in cars and trucks if not at the mill itself.
"In a pulp mill, you take your tree, you throw it into your big vat and it gets chopped up and the fibre becomes your pulp and your paper," Warkentin said. "Whats left in there, the sap and the bark and so on a so forth, gets turned into black liquor and that all gets carried over and burned in the recovery boiler.
"The part that doesnt burn is called the soap. What Bluekey does is, we take that soap and we process it into a precursor to biodiesel called SDRF, or soap-derived refinery feedstock. The SDRF is then further refined into diesel fuel."
As it stands, pulp mills must send the soap out to another plant to turn it into tall oil before it can be converted into biodiesel. Bluekeys process is onsite and cuts out the tall oil step, saving on time, machinery and other costly resources.
The method, which Warkentin said is centred on five 10,000-litre tanks covering about 1,000 square feet, is nearing the end of research and development stage.
"We are just at the point where we are starting to talk to mills to participate in the last phases of the research," Warkentin said. "We are getting soap to provide to the National Research Council, so they can actually take that soap, run our process through on a pilot situation and give us the third-party credibility that we need."
He hopes to see the testing finalized in about nine months and then have a unit installed at a pulp mill by about nine months after that. And if Bluekey makes the competition finals, Warkentin will be busy putting together a Powerpoint presentation for adjudicators.
The idea was originally spawned by engineer Phil Pearse who set up the first lab for the process and was joined in the endeavour by chemist Mark Logan, who used to work for Canfors Intercon pulp mill, but now works for Bluekey. Prior to moving to Cranbrook, former UNBC chemistry instructor Dr. David Dick was also involved.