ABOUT SENECA BIOENERGY

Finger Lakes Grape Seed Oil fits well with the other agricultural products and renewable energy products being made locally by Seneca BioEnergy LLC, the parent company of Finger Lakes Grape Seed Oil. Seneca BioEnergy operates commercial production of biodiesel and other green energy fuels at our manufacturing facility in Romulus, Seneca County, New York.

Seneca BioEnergy’s products currently include the processing of local oilseeds for soybean and canola oil and agricultural meals, along with the processing of biodiesel from vegetable oils and waste oils. Once fully expanded operations are underway at the company’s renovated site, the Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex, a 55-acre industrial site with 400,000 square feet of warehouse space located at the former Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, additional green energy production will be underway for biomass, vineyard waste management and manufactured soils.

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from renewable sources, including vegetable oils, recycled cooking oil, waste grease and tallow. Biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and can be used in regular diesel engines with little or no modification. After being harvested, soybeans and other oilseed feedstocks are pressed releasing their oil, which undergoes the biodiesel production process called transesterfication, removing glycerin. What are left are methyl esters, the chemical name for biodiesel, and a secondary product glycerin. Biodiesel is being produced in the United States, reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and putting money back into rural economies. Since biodiesel is produced from soybeans and other oilseed crops, it can be grown over and over, unlike petroleum, which is nonrenewable. As a much more environment-friendly fuel than petroleum diesel, biodiesel lowers greenhouse gas emissions by up to 78 percent and does not have catastrophic effects if it is spilled. Biodiesel is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades faster than sugar, according to the National Biodiesel Board website. Biodiesel is typically blended with petroleum diesel in formulations referred to as B2 (2 percent biodiesel, 98 percent petroleum diesel), B5 (5 percent and 95 percent), B20 (20 percent and 80 percent). Though biodiesel is most commonly used in these kinds of blends, it can also be used in its pure form (B100), and many diesel engine manufacturers are testing operational performance using B100 fuels for truck and farm tractor engines. Although biodiesel contains a similar number of BTUs as petroleum diesel, which means similar engine performance in torque and horsepower, the chains are easily oxygenated and have a higher flash point. This makes biodiesel a much cleaner burning fuel that is safer to handle and store than petroleum diesel. And because biodiesel can go into the current fuel distribution system, it eliminates the huge cost of revamping the nationwide fuel distribution infrastructure. The Seneca AgBio Facility currently produces 500,000 gallons per year of biodiesel, and once fully expanded over the next couple of years, our facility will produce 15 million gallons of biodiesel annually for local and regional distribution to trucking fleets, bulk petroleum terminals and home heating oils.

The Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex has been designed as a “Closed-Loop Green Energy Complex,” with infrastructure and operating systems that produce on-site renewable energy. The oilseed processing and biodiesel production equipment require approximately 5 megawatts of power and more than 40,000 pounds per hour of steam for process heating. We are utilizing biomass combustion for our on-site generation of steam and power, thereby substantially reducing the carbon footprint of conventional natural gas or petroleum-fired systems. We are managing the production and delivery of biomass feedstocks (including waste wood, wood chips, switch grass and willows) for use in our renewable energy production facility. Revegetation of unproductive farmlands and reclamation of abandoned coal mine sites throughout the Pennsylvania and New York region will be completed with biomass crops to be harvested and used as feedstock materials for our closed-loop energy production facility. In addition to woody feedstocks, we are investigating expansion of biomass energy production using agricultural wastes and food wastes, which will be processed and digested at our facility to produce methane and electricity.

Soybean oil, derived from the seed of the legume plant Glycine max, is the vegetable oil feedstock for most of the biodiesel being produced in the United States today, and soybeans are the largest oilseed crop in the world. The United States is the world’s leading producer of soybeans, followed by Argentina and Brazil, according to the American Soybean Association Web site. Seneca BioEnergy’s soybean crushing facility in Romulus, Seneca County, will process about 500 tons per day of oilseeds, requiring about 10 million bushels of soybeans a year to produce 15 million gallons of vegetable oil annually for on-site production of biodiesel fuels. The Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex will be a mechanical processing crush plant, with mechanical extrusion and pressing of oilseeds. There will be no cooking or roasting of feedstocks, and no extraction using solvents. All feedstocks will be processed into natural products, with no wastes that would require disposal. In this manner, we will produce a high-value natural soybean oil, which can be sold as a food-grade vegetable oil.

To supplement the use of soybeans, Seneca BioEnergy will use Canola seeds as needed at the green energy complex to produce vegetable oil for biodiesel fuels. Canola oil is produced from the crushed seeds of Canola plants, which are grown in the United States, Canada and many other parts of the world, according to the U.S. Canola Association’s Web site. Canola was first bred in Canada in the 1970s and is a cultivar of the rapeseed plant, a member of the mustard family. Canola’s name is a contraction of “Canadian ola,’’ with ola being derived from oleum, the Latin word for oil. More than 90 percent of our nation’s Canola is grown on the Northern Plains. Canola is an effective and efficient source for biodiesel, although it is not yet being used as a common biodiesel feedstock. Canola yields more than 40 percent oil when crushed, compared to 18 percent for soybeans, the most common biodiesel feedstock. The Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex will be the region’s first combined soy/Canola mechanical extrusion and biodiesel facility.

Agricultural meal is a useful secondary product of the extrusion and pressing of soybeans and Canola seeds. The Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex will produce a total of 110,000 tons a year of these agricultural meals, which will be marketed as a high-protein regional feedstock for the production of animal feeds for farmers. Soybean meal is high in protein and energy and is one of the most commonly used protein supplements in North America. It is a palatable feedstuff and may be used as the major protein supplement in rations for dairy cattle and other animals. Worldwide, about 85 percent of the world’s soybeans are processed, or “crushed,’’ annually into soybean meal and oil. About 98 percent of the soybean meal that is crushed is further processed into animal feed, with the balance used to make soy flour and proteins. Of the oil fraction, 95 percent is consumed as edible oil; the rest is used for industrial products, including biodiesel, fatty acids and soaps. The Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex will produce a superior natural meal, derived from the mechanical extrusion of soybeans and Canola. Our agricultural meal is a more valuable feedstuff in the production of cattle feed than commodity products currently available.

The Seneca AgBio Green Energy Complex is located within the Finger Lakes grape vineyards and winery region of New York. More than 100 vineyards and wineries are locally positioned within a 75-mile radius of our facility. As part of the environmental sustainability platform of our business, Seneca BioEnergy is working with local vineyards and wineries to manage their grape production wastes (known as pomace) and to develop site-specific programs for reduction of nutrient loadings into site soils and surface waters. We perform consulting engineering and operational services, which include nutrient reduction plans, pomace processing and separation of grape seeds from the residual pomace at the vineyards. Through our regional processing of waste pomace and separating grape seeds for extrusion pressing, we produce the Finger Lakes first grape seed oil at our Romulus, NY facility. We utilize and recycle the vineyard waste materials for on-site compost and off-site production of manufactured soils.