One year after Austrian biodiesel engineering company BDI-BioEnergy International AG completed upgrades at Crimson Renewable Energy LP in Bakersfield, California, including process optimization and expansion under BDI’s RetroFit program, the company has announced another milestone project at the same facility. Crimson has chosen BDI as technology provider to build a new plant in Bakersfield that will run alongside Crimson’s existing plant.

The new plant will feature RepCat technology, a patented biodiesel production system for low-quality feedstock with high free fatty acids (FFA) that employs a recyclable catalyst. The company says the process technology’s low-cost, recyclable catalyst bypasses complex treatment of glycerin, providing a high-purity coproduct and relatively low operating costs. Furthermore, the technology is extremely feedstock-flexible, allowing efficient processing of waste oils and fats of different kinds and origin.

BDI introduced the RepCat technology 10 years ago. Its first plant utilizing the novel process was built in Austria, followed by an installation in Hong Kong, where trap grease from local restaurants is being converted, and in the U.K., where “fatbergs” from the London sewage system are used as feedstock. The new Crimson plant will mainly process fats, oil and grease (FOG) from metropolitan areas in California. BDI says this will be the first plant of its kind in the U.S.

“Following the successful upgrading of certain major subsystems of our existing biodiesel plant, BDI was the leading contender for the addition of a new production line to expand of our plant in California,” said Harry Simpson, CEO of Crimson Renewable Energy. “It was a good business decision for Crimson to choose BDI because of the very positive experience we had with the highly professional BDI team over the past two years, combined with BDI’s long history of building successful biodiesel plants and the opportunity to utilize the BDI RepCat technology to run new waste oil feedstocks.”

Hermann Stockinger, vice president of sales at BDI, said “We got to know Crimson as a results-oriented customer with a strong market position but who was still open to new technologies. All of us at BDI are now very much looking forward to working together again with the excellent Crimson team in order to make this project a success and prove the many benefits of the BDI RepCat technology.”

Stockinger told Biodiesel Magazine that the RepCat plant will add another 12 MMgy to the existing 24 MMgy of capacity at Crimson, bringing the total biodiesel production capacity on-site to 36 MMgy. He added the project is slated for completion in mid-2019.