So if you're interested in the bio fuel industry, I would say
that's the most important thing for you looking at do you want
to do this and how do I get into this.
It really starts with that desire and that passion.
My name is Bio Joe Renwick.
I work at green energy bio fuels. I'm the co owner and CEO.
Our business is a recycling company and we recycle both
waste vegetable oil as well as animal fat. Everybody always
ask me bio Joe, how in the world do you make biodiesel. We start
with waste oil, animal fat or vegetable oil
that we collect from waste cooking oil
waste frying facilities. And we bring it back it looks
like this when it comes in and
starts. So you see some chunky stuff here in the bottom
all of that waste this product that we remove from the oil
before we start the biodiesel production process.
so step one, collect raw nasty waste chunky crudy oil and
filter and refine that oil.
And then the next step
after we filter and refine as we put it through a chemical
process that removes this dark layer which is called glycerol.
Glycerol is a form of alcohol found in all animal fat and
vegetable oil.
The next step after we remove chemically the glycerol
is we also replace that glycerol form of alcohol
with a different which is methonal.
So it's an alcohol exchange. So we take the raw oil remove
one form of alcohol, replace it with another. That creates
biodiesel which is this really light colored product on
the top here.
And we recycle and sell this glycerol as a whole another
product to a whole different industry.
That leaves us with a finished product after
refinement of straight biodiesel. This is 100%
bio-diesel. You can see how light in color it is and how
thin it is when you shake it.
And so this performs exactly like a regular diesel fuel if
you put it into a
vehicle. So no modifications required,
just put it in and ride.
So from waste oil we refine it and filter it.
Then we add chemicals
that rejects the form of alcohol called glycerol and accepts
another form of alcohol called methanol. And then that
creates a methyl ester. So it's a completely different chemical
compound and it runs beautifully in any diesel engine with no
modification.
So I get asked a lot, Bio Joe how in
the world can I get a job or learn more about or work with
your company green energy Biofuels?
And really it just comes down to do you have the passion and
the drive that you want to really get into this?
And if so if we do a number of internship
programs here in South Carolina.
There's a lot of a two year colleges,
a lot of tech schools that offers some
bio fuel related courses. And then if you just
find yourself at a college
that you're interested in this,
we've set up internship programs specifically, individually for
certain students to where those students can get college
credits and learn about how we do what we do. And so to me it's
just do you have the passion and the drive and do you want
to do an internship?
If all those answers are yes, then we'll figure out
some way to make it work.
It really comes down to, what do you want to do with your life?
If you're if you're interested in bio fuel,
I would say almost any major that you would go
through in college you could seek a job or
employment with our company.
We've hired engineering majors. We've
hired English majors. We've hired history
majors. We've hired chemists. There are so
many different facets to this business that I need
somebody that knows how to run a business and do
logistics the plan the trucks to come in and out
and haul our product. But I also need somebody to
fix and maintain those trucks. And we have full
time people for that. I need people to drive
those trucks. I need people to operate this facility
to pump product from tank to tank and
then maintain the pumps and the electrical
controls on the valves that run the plant. So we
need a little bit of everything. And so it's
interesting, you know it really just comes down to,
do you want to be in the biodiesel diesel or bio
fuel industry?
The biggest challenges in my job
are finding the right people to employ. And so we don't have
high turnover with our business,
but when we do hire someone if they don't stay for six months
to three years then it's a lot of time and energy to train
that person, train that person, train that person.
And then ultimately
have them go somewhere else and then have to start over at zero
training the next person. That's probably our biggest challenge.
you know ultimately the product that we bring in, the waste oil
is being generated every day. We're in the south, everybody's
fried food. There's no shortage of fried
waste oil to be collected.
And so that demands always there.
And then on the back end, the customers that buy this waste
oil that we refine, the demand is through the roof. If I can
make a million gallons every day, I could sell a million
gallons every day.
And so our challenge is how do we keep
and retain these employees that we bring in and highly
specialized train them to do the job that we do?
You know just in the last three years we've doubled our revenue
and doubled our staff and built new plants and grown like
wildfire. And so that growth can only be sustained by a good
crew of employees.
Well what I like most about my job is
is always something different
every day. So before I started this career
I was a account executive for a bank.
And it was the same thing monotonous every day.
I tried to help people get loans. And that was
just it. But with this every day and every week and every month
is completely different. So
the last few weeks all I've been doing is negotiating purchase
of three brand new vehicles for our business.
But last month, I didn't deal with that
and the month before that I dealt with contract
negotiations with big huge manufacturing industries. And
then the month before that I worked on the heating system
designed for this plant that we're in right now. And the
month before that, I worked on a waste water treatment
process design. And so every day it's different. You know, I'm
dealing with employees as like a HR
department and management type thing.
I'm dealing with the logistics of trucks and negotiating
contracts of when we buy waste and when we sell finished
product. I mean I'm into everything, every single day.
And so it's always something new I mean I never get bored that
what am I going to do today? It's more like, 'Oh my
gosh! I've got so much to do today! What am I going
to choose to work on?'
My best advice for someone that wants to become an entrepreneur
or as we have phrased it an eco-preneur is you just have to
have that passion and that drive that no matter what
you're going to succeed and you're not going to
take no for an answer.