Marathon completes startup of North Dakota renewable diesel refinery

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) has fully commissioned a grassroots renewable diesel production unit built as part of the operator’s conversion of its former conventional crude oil refinery in Dickinson, ND, into a renewables manufacturing site (OGJ Online, Dec. 20, 2019).

Following operational startup in late-2020 and based on Haldor Topsoe AS’s proprietary HydroFlex technology, the new Dickinson unit is now producing 100% renewable diesel from soy and corn oil at its full design capacity of 12,000 b/d, MPC and Haldor Topsoe said in separate announcements on Aug. 4-5.

Commissioning of the Dickinson refinery’s HydroFlex unit follows MPC’s late-2019 decision to convert the refining site into a renewable diesel production plant as part of the operator’s plan to increase output of fuels that align with objectives of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) as well as MPC’s own greenhouse gas (GHG)-reduction targets.

MPC also has selected Haldor Topsoe’s HydroFlex technology to be implemented as part of the operator’s conversion of its now permanently idled 161,000-b/d refinery in Martinez, Calif., into a renewable fuels production site (OGJ Online, Oct. 5, 2020).

With final engineering on the project now underway, the reconfigured Martinez renewables refinery is scheduled to achieve first-phase production rates of 17,000 b/d of renewable diesel by second-half 2022 before ramping up to its full production capacity of 47,000 b/d by 2023, MPC said on June 8, 2021.