Currently biodiesel is produced using liquid acid and/or base catalysts. Liquid catalysts become a waste, contaminating the glycerin byproduct. The solid PHE catalyst stays in the reactor, yielding a much more valuable high purity glycerin. Further, current biodiesel processing requires an independent pretreatment process for low quality (high free fatty acid) feedstocks. Since the PHE technology does not require a separate pretreatment process, PHE can use less expensive feedstocks with significantly lower capital and operating costs.