Crown Iron Works Company

Renewable Energy Group, Inc.

Reg Biofuels, LLC

William Michael McDonald

Myron Francis Danzer

Scott Alan Kingery

Matthew Leonard Schultes

Wayne William McCalley

John Mostek

Timothy L Ely

An improved biodiesel production process includes the steps of processing a feedstock to produce biodiesel, cooling the biodiesel so as to form sediment, and filtering the biodiesel to remove the sediment. The resulting biodiesel from the cold filtration process avoids problems of sediment formation during storage and transportation.

Biodiesel cold filtration process

A continuous separation of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) from glycerol in a low pressure dry transesterification process for vegetable oil is provided. Improved purity of the FAME and the glycerol fractions are achieved via the use of continuous decantation so as to thereby eliminate the need for a water wash step for the FAME fraction. Excess methanol from the FAME and the glycerol fractions is readily recovered in a dry vacuum extraction process. Water which has been inadvertently introduced into the process is removed from the recovered excess methanol by desiccant columns equipped with molecular sieves instead of the traditional energy and capital intensive fractionation processes practiced for this purpose.

Process for dry synthesis and continuous separation of a fatty acid methyl ester reaction product

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Maplewood, MN, United States of America

William Michael McDonald