Advanced PreTreatment
The unique feedstock PreTreatment Process
Renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plants are focusing on using all different types of oils and fats, from fresh soybean oil to animal fat from a rendering plant. Such plants require high feedstock quality and extremely low contaminations by, e.g. phosphorus or metals. Taken all together, the key for a successful design of a feedstock PreTreatment plant is high expertise regarding fresh and waste oils, as well as a deep understanding of the requirements and the specific characteristics of the downstream process.
For more than 25 years, BDI has been gaining vast experience in PreTreatment of various types of available feedstock. The result is the advanced PreTreatment process, a flexible and modular process to handle all kinds of oils and fats.
Vegetable oils require a simple PreTreatment process as the impurity levels are lower compared to waste oils and fats. However, these impurities also need to be removed in a specific process to avoid catalyst poisoning in the downstream process.
Used cooking oils are a very valuable recycling material for renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel production. The largest quantities are generated in industry and commerce. The quality and the impurity level of UCO strongly depend on their source, which has to be considered regarding the process design.
Animal fats are available on the market in different qualities. Processing animal fats requires attention to additional topics, like the content of plastic in animal fats. Therefore, BDI uses a unique and patented process to remove such substances from the feedstock.
Several waste streams from the palm oil production, like POME (palm oil mill effluent), PSO (palm sludge oil) or EFB (extracted oil from empty fruit bunches), can be used as renewable feedstock.
Several more waste oils and fats are available that can be used for the renewable diesel production, like distillers corn oil or trap grease. An important aspect for all feedstock is that the PreTreatment process is designed to handle and pre-treat them in an appropriate way.
The BDI advanced PreTreatment Process is a special process designed to purify vegetable oils and waste oils and fats for renewable diesel and SAF production. The process is based on BDI’s long-term experience in all kinds of oils and fats.
BDI’s PE Reduction unit uses an approach to overcome the drawbacks from filtration-based PE reduction stages. BDI’s process works entirely without filtration. The polyethylene particles are bound to a support material and separated from the feedstock.
- Flexible and modular process: core units and additional units based on specific feedstock requirements suitable for a broad range of feedstock
- Robust and efficient pre-purification unit, specially designed for processing waste oils and fats
- Unique, patented system to remove polyethylene from the feedstock without filtration
