Meridian Energy Group says its Davis project in Belfield, North Dakota, will be the world’s 1st net-zero carbon refinery

Meridian Energy Group Inc. announced April 16 that its Davis Refinery project being built in Belfield, North Dakota, will be the world’s first net-zero carbon refinery.

According to Meridian Energy Group, the Davis Refinery is a fully permitted 49,500-barrel-per-day (bpd) greenfield refinery that will utilize state-of-the-art environmental technology and controls to produce ultra-clean transportation fuels for local and regional sales.

In developing and permitting the Davis Refinery, Meridian Energy Group said it developed substantial intellectual property for small full-conversion refineries that can achieve permitting for air-quality purposes as a “synthetic minor source,” utilizing local crude-oil sources “to meet the demand for clean fuels that meet all current and foreseen EPA standards,” the company said.

Meridian Energy Group said it has been working to complete the integrated design of the Davis Refinery so the purchase of modules and equipment can proceed.

“As part of that effort, Meridian has made additional design modifications that are responsive to the evolving marketplace for clean fuels and the energy transition,” the company stated. “From the early development of the project, the design for Davis has incorporated vegetable oil coprocessing to comply with the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard. As the renewable volume obligation (RVO) under the RFS has increased, Meridian has explored the limits of this process with Meridian’s process licensor, Axens NA, utilizing the Axens Vegan® technology.”

According to Meridian Energy Group, the refinery design demonstrates that greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from Davis will be reduced to less than 50 percent of industry-average levels, and the remaining GHG emissions will be offset by coprocessing vegetable oil in its 20,000 bpd diesel hydrotreater unit to produce renewable diesel.*

Mark Fonda, Meridian Energy Group’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, said, “Meridian has now determined that up to 20 percent (4,000 bpd) of the capacity of the diesel hydrotreater can be allocated to process vegetable oil. This allows us to not only meet our RINs credit balance under the RFS, but to also offset our scope 1 CO2 emissions. This is an important development for the energy industry as it enables the refining industry to accelerate decarbonization and to play an even greater role in the transition to a carbon-neutral future.”

Anand Karre, Meridian Energy Group’s environmental manager, added, “Davis is the first full-conversion refinery ever permitted as a synthetic minor source and the only refinery ever to meet EPA’s Class 1 air-quality standards. The Davis design includes implementation of state-of-the-art, lowest achievable emission rate (LAER) technology and best available control technology (BACT). This includes ultralow-NOx burners, selective catalytic reduction (SCR), continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS), enhanced LDAR optical gas imaging (OGI), cascade flare system with vapor recovery and elimination of evaporative circulating cooling water using only fin-fan air coolers.”

William Prentice, chairman and CEO of Meridian Energy Group, said, “Even after having obtained all the requisite permits, and after successfully defending those permits, Meridian has continued to improve the design for Davis and further reduce greenhouse-gas and other emissions. Davis will soon come to fruition as major equipment purchases are initiated and as Meridian resumes field construction activities this summer. Among other things, this latest development also means that the Davis Refinery will become an even larger market for North Dakota’s agricultural products.”

Meridian has issued a white paper on this development, which is available on its website.

*Editor’s Note: Biobased Diesel Daily® asked Meridian Energy Group to further explain its calculations in getting to net zero. Meridian Energy Group CTO Mark Fonda explained, “The coprocessed vegetable oil (soybean) has an LCFS carbon intensity of 53.86 g CO2/MJ compared to Bakken Crude, which is 93.20 g CO2/MJ, for a 42 percent reduction on those barrels. The vegetable oil is 8 percent of our feed, so the net carbon reduction is 3.4 percent. The Davis facility has a 55 percent reduction in scope 1 plus scope 2 emissions (conversion process) compared to a typical refinery. The remaining 45 percent CO2 emissions of 266,883 metric tons per year (2.66 g CO2/MJ) are offset by the carbon uptake of the vegetable-oil feedstock amounting to 300,847 metric tons per year (2.96 g CO2/MJ).”