Darling and Valero jointly announced that their 50/50 joint venture, Diamond Green Diesel (DGD), has received approval from both companies’ Boards of Directors to proceed with the construction of the renewable diesel production facility to be located at Valero’s Port Arthur, Texas refinery.

DGD Port Arthur’s capacity is estimated to be 470 million gallons per year of renewable diesel. This new plant is anticipated to commence operations in the second half of 2023. Once operational, and when combined with the increased capacity at the Norco, LA facility (currently 290 million gallons annually with an anticipated increase of 400 million gallons due to be operational later this year), DGD’s total annual production capacity is expected to be approximately 1.2 billion gallons of renewable diesel and 50 million gallons of renewable naphtha.

The current estimated construction cost is $1.45 billion to be split equally between the joint venture partners and funded from internal cash flows provided by DGD.

We expect low-carbon fuel policies to continue to expand globally and drive demand for renewable fuels, and to that end, we are applying our liquid fuels expertise to continue to expand our long-term competitive advantage in low-carbon transportation fuels with the expansion of DGD.

—Joe Gorder, Valero Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,

To produce renewable diesel, Diamond Green Diesel first pretreats used cooking oil and inedible animal fats to remove impurities. Next, these fats are processed into renewable diesel by:

• Hydrotreating: Using high pressure hydrogen to remove the oxygen (which is converted to water).

• Isomerization: A chemical process that changes the structure of the molecules without changing the number of atoms. This enables the fuel to be used in cold weather.

• Fractionation: A chemical process to separate the liquid into finished products.

The US restaurant industry generates an estimated 2.3 billion pounds of used cooking oil annually. Companies such as Darling Ingredients provide restaurants, grocers and other food service establishments with storage tanks or bins to store used fryer oil. During regularly scheduled visits, the service company pumps the oil into dedicated trucks and transports it to their processing plants, where it is cleaned of debris or solid matter and heated to evaporate any water. The used cooking oil is transported to the Diamond Green Diesel facility, where Valero manufactures the renewable diesel.

Darling Ingredients is one of the world’s leading producers of organic ingredients, producing a wide array of sustainable protein and fat products while being one of the largest producers of renewable clean energy. With operations on five continents, Darling collects waste streams from the agri-food industry, repurposing into specialty ingredients, such as hydrolyzed collagen, edible and feed-grade fats, animal proteins and meals, plasma, pet food ingredients, fuel feedstocks, and green bioenergy.

Valero is a Fortune 50 company based in San Antonio, Texas, and it operates 15 petroleum refineries with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3.2 million barrels per day and 13 ethanol plants with a combined production capacity of approximately 1.68 billion gallons per year. The petroleum refineries are located in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and the ethanol plants are located in the Mid-Continent region of the US.