December 1 Update:

The original portions of the Soy Energy plant were fully commissioned on November 4^th.  Also commissioned were the utilities that serve the Plant’s original & new systems.  These systems took longer to commission than originally thought due to discovering some unanticipated bottlenecks and issues; however, we worked our way through those then moved on to commission the new sections of the plant.

Also on November 4^th Soy Energy was notified that the EPA’s Office of Transportation & Air Quality had certified our plant as an RFS2-registered producer of renewable fuel.  Our company ID is 4301 and our facility ID is 82968.  We currently have approximately 430,000 gallons of soybean oil-based biodiesel in storage that is currently being marketed.

Whereas soybean oil was used for commissioning the original systems and certifying the plant; the newly installed processes were designed to enable the plant to take Corn Stillage Oil (CSO, which is inedible corn oil) from ethanol plants and process it into ASTM-quality biodiesel.

At this point all plant systems are mechanically & substantially complete.  The plant encompasses the following processes or systems; noted next to the system is the percent completion of that system’s commissioning:

1. Feedstock Receiving         100%;
2. Feedstock Storage            100%;
3. Degumming (New)            100%;
4. Acid Esterification (New)   100%;
5. Caustic Refining                100%;
6. Bleaching (New)                  20%;
7. Transesterification             100%;
8. Winterization (New)               0%;
9. Filtration                            100%;
10. Finished Oil Storage         100%;
11. Glycerin Storage               100%;
12. Finished Oil Loadout         100%; and,
13. Glycerin Loadout               100%.

Although the commissioning process is not moving as rapidly as we'd prefer, we can report that every step in this methodical process has been Safe and Successful thus far, including full-capacity performance of the original sections of the plant; full-capacity degumming of CSO; and, esterifying high Free Fatty Acid (FFA), Degummed CSO from 15.5% FFA to less than 1% FFA.