BioCat Fuels
16300 Valley Drive
Andover, MN 55304
763- 331-0958

The Mcgyan process, named for its inventors (Clayton McNeff, Arlin Gyberg and Bingwen Yan), turns triglycerides and free fatty acids into biodiesel. It all started in 2006 when Augsburg College student, Brian Krohn, wanted to research making biodiesel from waste cooking oil. After Krohn’s initial research failed, he and his advisor, Arlin Gyberg, met with Clayton McNeff , vice president of research at SarTec and one of the world’s experts on zirconia, the metal oxide of zirconium. McNeff calls zirconium “a catalyst that can speed up chemical processes by thousands of times.” Krohn, Gyberg, McNeff and SarTec scientist Bingwen Yan collaborated to develop the fast, flexible and efficient biodiesel production process now known as the Mcgyan process. It will be used for large scale production for the first time when the EverCat plant in Isanti, Minnesota, is operational in Fall 2008.

The Mcgyan process is BETTER than current biodiesel production technologies because Mcgyan….

• Does not consume the catalyst, reducing the high cost of replacement.
• Does not use large amounts of water. Traditional biodiesel processes use huge amounts of water.
• Does not produce the waste products that traditional biodiesel plants have.
• Reactors and related equipment are smaller and simpler than traditional biodiesel, requiring much less space.
• Does not use strong acids or bases. Traditional plants must use these to neutralize their batch processes.
• Is not affected by water, while the traditional biodiesel process must remove all water.
• Can use 100% fatty acids while traditional plants (without expensive pre-processing equipment) cannot process oils with much more than 1- 2% fatty acid.  Almost all of the oils on the list of feedstocks have fatty acid contents well above 2%.
• Converts free fatty acids to biodiesel.
• Allows faster conversion – minutes rather than hours. The traditional biodiesel process is a batch process which requires hours of processing per batch.