Partners advance grassroots Nebraska renewable diesel plant

Heartwell Renewables LLC, a 50-50 joint venture of Cargill Inc. and the Love’s Family of Companies has let a contract to Worley Ltd. to deliver related works for development of a proposed greenfield renewable diesel plant to be built in Hastings, Neb.

As part of the late-May contract award, Worley will provide detailed and field engineering services the renewables-based plant that, once operable, will use a feedstock of vegetable oils and tallow—a rendered animal-fat coproduct following protein processing—to produce about 302 million l./year (80 million gal/year) of renewable diesel for use as a drop-in fuel in diesel-powered vehicles without requiring engine modifications, the service provider said in a release.

Worley, which will execute the project from its Houston offices with support from the firm’s global integrated delivery team in India, did not reveal a value of the contract.

Project background

Award of the engineering services contract follows the JV’s announcement of the proposed Heartwell Renewables project in April 2021. Under the partnership, Cargill will supply the plant’s tallow feedstock as well as other low-carbon feedstocks (e.g., distillers corn oil), while Musket Corp.—Love’s commodity trading and logistics arm—will transport and market the finished renewable diesel product to US retail pumps, according to Heartwell Renewables’ website and separate Apr. 20, 2021, releases from Love’s and Cargill.

The Nebraska plant comes as part of both partners’ commitments to reducing carbon emissions while meeting market demand for lower-carbon renewable fuels in line with the energy transition, the companies said.

Cargill’s supply of renewable feedstock to the plant will also support Cargill’s agriculture business, the protein division of which operates six US beef rendering plants that offer beef animal fats—including beef inedible tallow, bleachable fancy tallow, and beef technical tallow—as feedstock for production of renewable diesel and renewable naphtha, according to an Oct. 5, 2021, circular to customers.

Upon announcing the project—which, as of late-April 2021, was slated to begin construction “in the following weeks”—the partners said Heartwell Renewables was scheduled for startup in spring 2023.