Please feel free to contact us if your question is not answered below.
pbehrle@rbl.us.com
Q. What is the typical footprint of an RBL machine?
A. Approximately 10’ wide, 50’ long and 12’ high. Additional circulation space is needed for maintenance, input mechanisms and tankage for oil, solid and water output streams. Q. Where are the machines manufactured?
A. Fairfield, NJ, USA
Q. What are the machine options?
A. Machines are measured in terms of metric tons of raw material input per hour. Machine sizes available are 3, 5, 10, and 15 tons per hour.
Options:
Remove size reduction if only sludge is being processed
Add bone breaker if larger bones such as full swine and cattle bones are being processed.
Add feather processing unit
Add steam boiler if steam is not available on site Add Doda's bio separator to process highly contaminated waste. Doda technology separates inorganics (e.g. plastic bags, utensils, etc.) from the organics. Watch video of Doda technology at composter in US.
Q. What are the machine oil outputs?
A. The RBL machine is available in sizes ranging from 3 metric tons/hour to 15 metric tons/hour, with annual oil production (assuming 20% oil content) from 1,000,000 gallons to 5,625,000 gallons per year, respectively (if run 20 hours per day 6 days per week).
Q. How are the machines sold? A. RBL is entirely customer focused in our sales models. Our customers can purchase our machines outright; or, depending upon the terms warranted by customer requirements and market conditions, RBL will also consider establishing partnerships or JVs with customers to place machines at customer locations. When RBL partners with a customer, RBL will share proportionately in the site's revenues. RBL can also assist our customers in obtaining either capital leases or operating leases for our machines. RBL also has a business model under which RBL and our investors own the machine and pay the site a royalty on oil sold.
Q. What additional services and support are provided by RBL?
A. RBL will provide full market and technical support for customers, including training, and optional oil sales. RBL provided maintenance and parts agreements are required on all machines. RBL provides optional operations contracts as well. Each RBL Machine is supported by telemetric monitoring from RBL’s corporate office in NJ.
Q. What are RBL's markets?
A. RBL’s technology is valuable in sectors where the cost of disposing of organic waste is significant; and therefore, the oil extraction technology provides the means to create value from that waste. At present RBL has recognized the following market segments as having sales potential. livestock processors food manufacturers
waste haulers composters (watch a video of an RBL machine at an in vessel composter) anaerobic digesters
biodiesel and renewable diesel production facilities Additional raw material sources include fish residuals, grease trap waste, oil seed crushing and oil extraction for algae producers.
Q. Why do food composters want to install the RBL technology?
A. Read the BioCycle article about our technology at a food composter in England. Watch the video of the RBL technology at a food composter in England. There are multiple benefits to composters: - Added revenue stream from the extracted oil
- Composting odors are reduced. Odor reduction from the composting process is due to removal of the oil before composting.
- Composting will occur faster due to removal of the oil. The faster composting allows more raw material to be taken into the composter thus increasing tipping fees
- RBL technology delivers size reduced, heated feedstock to the composting process, thus making the composting more efficient.
- Available composting volume is increased due to the removal of the oil. More raw material can be taken into the composting process, thus increasing tipping fees.
- Inclusion of the Doda inorganic/organic separator option allows for removal of inorganic contaminants from the compost prior to composting. The composter can accept waste steams with higher levels of inorganic contamination. Watch Doda video
Q. How is RBL's market demand identified?
A. Demand for RBL machines is driven by multiple distinct supply and demand factors that influence the customer value equation: New technology added to existing processes creating new value streams. Examples – the commercial composting industry already converts food residuals to compost and fertilizer. By adding the RBL Machine into their composting processes and removing the oil prior to composting, composters greatly improve composting efficiencies (composts faster without the oil), produce a better product and produce an additional valuable oil by-product. When livestock processors add the RBL technology to process DAF sludge they are creating entirely new value streams from a previously and expensively discarded byproduct. Improvement to existing waste disposal methods. Example – the livestock processing business already has methods by which they dispose of their offal (viscera). The RBL Machine represents a vast efficiency improvement and a more environmentally sound approach to current practices, while creating an enhanced value stream from the by-products. Cost efficient, more effective replacement of existing technologies. Example - the oil seed crushing business in dominated by large scale, hexane crushing plant technologies. The RBL Machine is an attractive replacement for existing technologies from pricing, flexibility, maintenance and efficiency standpoints. Supply of feedstock oil to biofuel and energy generation customer. Example: Biodiesel producers must have access to low cost feedstock oils to operate their facilities to be economically viable. The oil output from the RBL technology is a source of attractively priced, non-food, environmentally acceptable feedstock to biodiesel producers and energy generating facilities. Q. Where have the industrial scale machines successfully operated in England and Europe? A. At a food residual composter, a biodiesel plant, a poultry processor, and at two swine processors. Q. What is the oil being used for in England? A. Thus far all of the oil produced has been sold to a biodiesel producer. Please see the recommendation letter from the biodiesel producer. The oil can also be used as livestock feed or as a petroleum substitute fuel source for energy generation. Q. How much does the RBL oil sell for? A. The price varies based upon the feedstock run through the machine. The oil has been selling at a market price for similar oils (e.g. white grease if swine offal is processed, poultry fat if poultry offal is processed and yellow grease if food residuals are processed). Market prices for these types of oils are established by the Jacobsen report, which is published daily. Prices roughly correlate proportionately to heating oil prices. Prices for RBL oil are currently about $2.00 per gallon and are about $1.00 per gallon less than soybean oil. Q. Are biodiesel and renewable diesel manufacturers interested customers for RBL oil and RBL technology? A. Availability of affordable, environmentally acceptable biomass feedstock is essential for the development of alternative fuel solutions. Waste to energy feedstock acquisition is key for the biodiesel industry, which is not only faced with soaring vegetable oil prices, but has also been tainted by the food vs. fuel debate. There is value to biodiesel and renewable diesel producers to organize the local feedstock flow into RBL machines, and to use the oil produced by those machines; and as such, biodiesel producers are potentially both machine buyers and oil customers. Today biodiesel and renewable diesel producers are losing about 10 cents per gallon for biodiesel produced by soybean oil. Conversely, biodiesel producers will profit by about 50 cents per gallon using RBL oil to produce biodiesel or renewable diesel. Q. What is the availability of waste feedstocks in the United States? A. Each of our market sectors provides ample feedstock to support robust market demand for and oil off take from RBL’s technology. In the U.S., the annual raw material availability and potential oil production from selected feedstocks are as follows: | Waste Stream | Oil % Yield | Short Tons Available/Yr. | Gallons of Oil @ Anticipated Yields | | Poultry Offal* | 26% to 35% | 4,800,000 (USDA) | 365,000,000 | | Red Meat Offal** | 10% to 24% | 3,450,000 (USDA) | 183,000,000 | | Livestock DAF Sludge | 5% to 30% | 4,000,000 (RBL Study) | 130,000,000 | | Food Residual Portion of MSW | 6% to 40% | 31,375,000 (US EPA) | 1,200,000,000 | | Food Manufacturing Waste | 10% to 50% | 6,275,000 (Food Manufacturing Magazine) | 335,000,000 | | Total | | | ***2,213,000,000 |
*Includes Chicken and Turkey
** Includes Beef, Pork, Veal and Lamb
***Equals 3.7% of diesel and home heating oil consumed per year in U.S.
Additional raw material sources include fish residuals, grease trap waste, oil seed crushing and oil extraction for algae producers. Additional RBL feedstock sources include fish residuals, grease trap waste, soap stock and any other organic material that contains oil. Q. What is the potential for food recycling in the US?
A. According to the October 2008 issue of BioCycle magazine, in Germany approximately 50% of all households separate their food waste into source-separated organics (SSO) for collection and use for composting. According to the US EPA the U.S. recycles less than 3% of SSO now. If the US recycled instead of land filling SSO at the same 50% level as Germany does now, considerable reduction in land filling would occur. In addition:
Utilizing the RBL oil extraction technology, 600 million gallons of waste biodiesel feedstock could be extracted from the SSO per year, enough to meet more than half of the federal biodiesel Renewable Fuel Standard expected to be broadly enforced by the EPA in 2010,
If the residual waste was then commercially composted, 12 million tons of organic fertilizer could be produced annually, replacing petroleum based chemical fertilizers, and CO2 equivalent GHG emissions from landfills would be reduced by 15 million tons per year, the equivalent of taking 2,000,000 cars of the road. Q. How much waste material do we need to process per day in order to make the machine worthwhile?
A. Depending on the oil content of the waste material, we have found that a minimum of about 50 tons per day of waste material is needed in order to make the machine financially viable. Q. Can we process bones through the machine?
A. Poultry bones and bones from food residuals are easily processed by the standard machine as delivered. Should larger bones such as full swine femurs be processed, an optional bone breaker is available. Q. Can we process feathers through the machine?
A. Yes. The feather processing unit option may be required. Q. What are the energy requirements of the machine?
A. The machine requires electricity and steam. The energy requirements vary by machine. The value of oil produced vs. the cost of energy required to run the machine currently ranges from 5 to 1 to as high as 20 to 1. | RBL Machine Size | Electrical Consumption | Steam Consumption | 3-ton per hour | 50 kw | 400 lbs/hr | 5-ton per hour | 80 kw | 660 lbs/hr | 10-ton per hour | 140 kw | 1320 lbs/hr | 15-ton per hour | 250 kw | 2500 lbs/hr |
Q. What is the lead-time and how much do the machines cost?
A. Lead-time is approximately four months. Please contact us for machine quotes and profitability modeling.
pbehrle@rbl.us.com
RBL has built a detailed cost and revenue model for customer prospects that incorporates the machine cost, operating costs, avoided costs and income streams to determine customer return on investment. On average, these models illustrate a one to two year payback period on the machine and immediate operating cash flow benefit to the customer. The integration of an RBL machine into a single poultry plant can increase net income from one to two million dollars per year for that plant.
Q. Does RBL provide local sales assistance?
A. RBL has an experienced team of sales consultants. We are currently represented by more than 20 geographically dispersed sales agents including those covering the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. |
