Illinois-based Elevance Renewable Sciences has purchased the old Delta BioFuels facility. The company will revamp and expand the 800,000 square-foot building so it can make its specialty chemicals for use in personal care products, detergents, plastics, lubricants and a few other things.  The project will create 165 new jobs over several phases that are expected to take 5 years to implement. The Strategic Biomass Solutions (SBS) team at the Mississippi Technology Alliance worked with Delta Biofuels, Elevance and the Mississippi Development Authority to facilitate this project. Dr Sumesh Arora, director of Strategic Biomass Solutions said, "It is exciting to help bring cutting edge technologies to Mississippi that will lead to highly skilled jobs in the rapidly growing bio-based chemicals business."

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Diamond Green Diesel LLC, a joint venture of Darling International Inc. and Valero Energy Corp., has secured financing for the construction of its renewable diesel plant in Norco, La.  The proposed 137 MMgy facility will be located adjacent to an existing Valero oil refinery.  The project will not be partially funded by a DOE loan guarantee as previously planned. 

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DOE announced June 29 a series of new manufacturing job training partnerships using DOE's National Training and Education Resource (NTER). DOE will be partnering with the Manufacturing Institute, the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies, and Macomb Community College outside of Detroit, Michigan. The program will provide students with highly interactive and engaging materials in a variety of science, technology, engineering, and math areas, as well as virtual technician training. Partners can access resources available through NTER, an open-source, Web-based, interactive learning environment.