ROLLINSFORD, N.H. — Construction at Green View Technologies is about 80 percent complete and owners are excited their dream of creating New England's first oil reprocessing facility has almost come to fruition.
Green View President Mark Wentworth, whose family owns Wentworth Greenhouses, said the state-of-the-art plant on Green View Drive will likely be completed in mid-to-late summer, something he and others involved in the project are eagerly awaiting.
"We think it's going be good for the environment and reduce the amount of used motor oil put back into it by reblending it back into new oil," said Wentworth. "It should be a big benefit for the area. There are no other facilities like it. The technology's fairly new, and it should become very popular as environmental concerns become greater over new oil."
The facility received local and state approval late last year. It is designed to clean used oil to be reused in commercial lubrication purposes, and Wentworth said his company plans to sell the cleaned oil to other companies to reblend it for a variety of retail purposes.
He said the facility adds 28 new jobs to the town and has the capacity to produce several million gallons of product a year. That total includes the byproducts of the process: distillate fuel, which is heavy-metal free and will be used to run the plant as well as sold to other businesses, such as Wentworth Greenhouses; and an asphalt product that can be used for roads and roof materials.
Wentworth said only about 2 percent of the product volume is unusable, as wastewater is generated by the process, while roughly 75 percent of the total product volume will be reprocessed oil, about 15 percent is fuel and the remainder is asphalt.
He said this efficiency, as well as the cleaner oils, will help reduce emissions because Green View isn't disposing of used oil or waste in an incinerator, as well as the fact the fuel generated by the process is cleaner and will help companies using it reduce their emissions.
"Once oil is burned, the resource is gone forever," said Wentworth. "Our process recovers that resource and we're able to use it over and over again, basically forever, so it's a good thing for the environment and energy conservation because it takes less energy to reprocess old oil than to refine new crude oil."
Aside from concerns about odors from the plant, which Wentworth has said they have mitigated through the design process, town officials have also expressed satisfaction about bringing the facility to Rollinsford because it will help boost the tax base and bolster the local economy.
Warren Daniel, the regional manager of the state's Small Business Development Center, also said he thinks the plant will be a notable addition to the area.
"I think that the plant is going to be a tremendous job creator," he said. "It's the kind of company we need in New Hampshire regarding sustainability and regarding bringing energy production to this country."
The Small Business Development Center as well as the Southeast Economic Development Corporation assisted Green View in developing a business plan and secure financing for the project, the cost of which Wentworth declined to disclose.
Green View financed part of the project through two different loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration, as well as through a $480,000 loan through the community development block grant program.
The block grant, loaned to Green View through the SEDC after the state and town approved the use of the grant, is the first-ever for Rollinsford, according to SEDC Executive Director Dennis McCann.
McCann said that milestone is important because he said the facility could not have been built without the block grant, which is a federal program that funds projects that, among other things, benefit low-income circumstances and/or work toward the betterment of the community.
McCann said he was grateful to have been a part of the process, and said he is looking forward to "celebrating" the end of the construction with Wentworth because Green View has been in the works for about 2 1/2 years. "It's been a while," he said. "We're pretty excited to participate in New England's first recycling plant for lubricating oil, especially when other areas of the country (and world) have these facilities and we don't."