Romulus-based RKA Petroleum said Monday that it's the first company in North America to become "marketer certified" under the BQ-9000 certification, including multiple feedstock based biodiesel.

RKA says the designation means it can now guarantee quality control standards that have passed the National Biodiesel Accreditation Program’s rigorous review and inspections process, even while handling various feedstock-based fuels.

The handling of biodiesel is as critical to fuel quality as proper production. BQ-9000 accreditation helps biodiesel distributors improve their fuel testing programs and reduce any chance of producing or distributing inadequate fuel. The program is a combination of the ASTM standard for biodiesel, ASTM D 6751, and a quality systems program that includes storage, sampling, testing, blending, shipping, distribution, and fuel management practices.

The National Biodiesel Accreditation Program is a cooperative and voluntary program for the accreditation of producers and marketers of biodiesel fuel. BQ-9000 is open to any biodiesel manufacturer, marketer or distributor of biodiesel and biodiesel blends in the United States and Canada.

The National Biodiesel Accreditation Program currently lists only ten BQ-9000 marketer certified distributors on its Web site, with RKA being No. 10.

RKA Petroleum offers a wide variety of alternative fuels, including  E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline), ethanol-blended gasoline (10 percent ethanol, 90 percent gasoline), pure ethanol (100 percent ethanol), and the biodiesel blends B5, B10, B20, and B99 blends (5, 10, 20 and 99 percent biodiesel blended with conventional petroleum-based diesel fuel respectively) at the rack or for delivery.

“BQ-9000 is a complete end-to-end documented awareness of the product," said Robert Lay, RKA's Biodiesel Quality Management Representative. "It's a process control quality assurance system that touches every single individual within our organization.”

Added Jason Hittleman, RKA's director of biofuels and information systems: “In order for biodiesel to be economically viable and for integration into the marketplace to be successful, biodiesel needs to be a uniform, fungible product. The terminal infrastructure needs to support that, where multiple shippers can keep inventory of biodiesel in the same tank, and have multiple different feedstock-based biofuels in the same tank without concerns for contamination or cold-flow issues. Our system is one of several in the country working toward this fungible goal.”

Established in 1956, RKA is a privately held family business. Certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise and with offices in southern Florida as well, RKA distributes more than 325 million gallons of fuel annually through its network of retail dealers, commercial businesses and job sites, government and military customers, and its pipeline terminal operation. The company does business throughout the United States and Ontario; operates Rex Carriers, its common carrier business; RKA Petroleum LLC, its terminal facility, and operates Land and Sea Petroleum Holdings, its Florida operation.

More at www.rkapetroleum.com.