GREAT FALLS — Montana Renewables announced on Tuesday plans for an on-site water treatment plant at their Great Falls facility.
This project will allow MRL to manage agricultural wash water, a byproduct of its production process, without shipping water to third-party locations.
An ordinary part of MRL’s operation includes washing renewable feedstocks (canola oil, corn oil, etc.) before those oils are used to produce renewable fuels.
The same approach is used by the food industry in preparing the same vegetable oils for the supermarket shelf. The resulting non-hazardous wash water is safely disposed of at permitted out-of-state facilities. This includes shipping of water by truck and rail.
With this new plant, Montana Renewables can do this processing in-house, extracting even more oil from the dirty water, resulting in more product.
Bruce Fleming, CEO of Montana Renewables, said, “It's money out the door and we'd like to keep that in Montana. There's no reason to, you know, pay railroads to move water around the country and to pay somebody else for a permit that we can have here in Montana.”
Montana Renewables hopes to break ground by the end of this year, but says that their loan from the U.S. Department of Energy could result in a later start date.
