Biodiesel Refinery in Mississippi Preparing to Start-Up

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Privately held, Biodiesel of Mississippi Corporation (Nettleton, Mississippi) is preparing to start-up Mississippi's first biodiesel refinery by the end of the month at an idle grain elevator site in Nettleton, Mississippi. (Plant 1061100, PEC 03002402)

The company has been working on getting the $17 million project moving forward for over a year and a half now and will soon be turning soybean oil into an environmentally friendly and renewable fuel source that can be used in all types of diesel fuel engines.

The plant will process soybean oil, supplied by local soybean processors Bunge and Cargill, into some 24 million gallons per year of pure biodiesel and the refinery will also be the first of its kind to be fueled by hydrogen.

On site storage will consist of tankage capable of storing over two million gallons of the fuel, and a 500,000-bushel elevator will house the virgin oil before being processed in a transesterification reactor system that washes and purifies the oil utilizing a catalyst and methanol feedstock.

Jay Brunson, Industrialinfo.com's Synthetic Fuels Manager said, "Once this plant becomes operational and all of the bugs are worked out, Biodiesel of Mississippi plans to build more and ever larger plants in the future utilizing this technology. Plans are already in the works for the company to build a 50 million gallon per year biodiesel refinery in a yet to be determined site in the Mississippi Delta area."