Rothsay, a Canadian rendering company, is awaiting approval of plans for a commercial biodiesel plant to be built in Quebec, Rothsay representative Claude Bourgault told Biodiesel Magazine in November.

Initially, the plant would produce 35 million liters (9.1 million gallons) of biodiesel per year with the ability to upgrade to 70 million liters (18.2 million gallons). The company has completed a feasibility study and is currently solidifying engineering plans. Bourgault said he hopes to have approval by mid-December so construction can begin.

Rothsay already runs a biodiesel pilot plant in Quebec, which currently produces four million liters (1.04 million gallons) of biodiesel per year. According to Bourgault, the pilot plant uses an original process derived from existing production technologies.

"We didn't reinvent the wheel or nuclear science," Bourgault said. "We took existing machines that are already being used for other fields of application [of biodiesel production]. It's partly a continuous system and partly a batch system, which allows us some flexibility to test the product at different stages of the chemical process."

The pilot plant was the starting point for the commercial plant Rothsay will build, allowing the company to test its process before moving to a full-scale operation.

"We had some bugs to work out of it," Bourgault said. "Once we work out a system that we want, we'll just carbon copy it somewhere else."