Calumet provides operational update on Montana Renewables’ Great Falls plant

Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP subsidiary Montana Renewables LLC (MRL) has completed construction and achieved startup of a new renewable feedstock pretreatment unit (PTU) at the operator’s renewables manufacturing plant in Great Falls, Mont. (OGJ Online, Apr. 18, 2022).

Equipped with proprietary technology from Applied Research Associates Inc. (ARA), MRL commissioned and ramped up the first-of-its-kind PTU as scheduled during second-quarter 2023, Calumet said on July 10 in a quarterly operational update to investors.

Officially commissioned in April, the new 10,000 b/d PTU at Great Falls is ARA’s first ever commercial Hydrothermal Cleanup (HCU) PTU to enter operation, ARA said in a separate May 31 release.

Designed to ready the most challenging feedstocks for further conversion into renewable fuels, the HCU PTU equips MRL with increased capability to pretreat waste fat, oil, and grease feedstocks with near 100% yield of clean organic product, allowing the producer to access a wide array of low-carbon intensity feedstocks for its production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel, the service provider said.

“[Now performing] as planned, [the HCU PTU] fully unlocks the huge feedstock optionality that comes with our advantaged location,” said Bruce Fleming, MRL’s chief executive officer (CEO) and executive vice-president of corporate development.

With startup of the HCU PTU, MRL has entered third-quarter 2023 running 12,500 b/d of renewable feedstock, with the feedstock mix currently consisting of 8,000 b/d untreated and 4,500 b/d treated safety stock as the operator rotates from clean to dirty inventory, Calumet said.

Full commissioning of the HCU PTU follows Calumet’s confirmation in a June 8 investor presentation that MRL’s Great Falls renewable fuels production unit achieved full-design capacity, making the plant North America’s largest producer of SAF.

"We worked through the expected new equipment teething problems at an excellent pace, and we enter the next quarter on track to demonstrate the steady-state earnings power of this business," Todd Borgmann, Calumet’s CEO, said on July 10.

All of MRL’s current SAF production—which came online in April—is delivered to Shell Aviation, while about half of the plant’s renewable diesel production is currently sold into Canada, Calumet said on July 10.

First announced in February 2021 and initially known as Calumet’s Great Falls renewable diesel project, MRL’s biorefinery involved reconfiguration of the CMRL refinery’s oversized 18,000-b/d mild hydrotreater—added in 2016 as part of an expansion project—to process a mix of renewable feedstocks sourced from local farms and ranches—including camelina, canola, mustard, and other non-soybean oils—to produce an array of low-carbon fuels in line with the global energy transition initiative (OGJ Online, Aug. 23, 2021).

Other developments

Alongside startup of MRL’s HCU PTU and fully operational Great Falls Plant, Calumet separately confirmed on July 10 the operator continues to progress with work on a proposed but still-yet-to-be-approved expansion on which engineering has already started that would, during 2024-25, enable the Great Falls biorefinery to expand SAF production at the site.

Known as MaxSAF, the planned project would expand MRL’s plant capacity by 50% to 18,000 b/d and its production of SAF to potentially 230 million gal/year—or 15,000 b/sd—using a second reactor MRL “opportunistically” acquired previously.

In its June 2023 investor presentation, Calumet also said MRL completed startup of a renewable hydrogen plant that has allowed the Great Falls biorefinery’s production of renewable diesel to increase to about 12,000 b/sd from its previous 6,000 b/sd output.