Proponents of a $45 million trees-to-fuel refinery weren’t quite ready Tuesday to identify their technology partner, but they continue to hold meetings in nine communities that might host their first refinery and 25-megawatt electrical plant.

Officials from Fractionation Development Center, a Rumford-based nonprofit firm promoting Maine biomass technologies for the Legislature, will be in Waldoboro today, Skowhegan next week and Jay and Westbrook in the weeks that follow, Executive Director Scott Christiansen said.

The organization has visited Baileyville and Millinocket since mid-January and has been making final its deal with its technology partner, which will build and operate the refinery that will supply bio-oil that will power the electrical plant.

“We continue to work on the selection process,” Christiansen said Tuesday.

Lincoln, Old Town and Presque Isle are other areas being considered.

“The bottom line for us is that the cost and availability of wood pulls us north and the cost and proximity of the turbine to the refinery pulls us south,” he said. “We are trying to figure out the dynamics within each transportation mode and what that would mean for any community we might settle in to. They [communities] all have pluses and minuses.”

FDC imagines a pyrolysis refinery and accompanying 25-megawatt electrical plant would be the first of several such tandem operations in the state. Each could create about 50 jobs, 20 for harvesting 800 to 900 tons of low-grade wood, such as hog-fuel, sawdust or chips, per day for the 30-worker plant to process into bio-oil, Christiansen has said.

The bio-oil would fuel the creation of electricity about as cleanly as does natural gas in specially designed plants located near the refineries – preferably within 50 to 70 miles. FDC is examining rail, sea and road options and the availability of low-grade wood within prospective host communities to see how they could all combine to lessen production costs for the bio-oil.

As many as 50 more jobs would be indirectly created, he said.

Millinocket is among the top four contenders being considered as a first site by FDC as well as its so-far unidentified technical partner, Christiansen said.

FDC needs a community that has extensive wood supplies and infrastructure that supports forestry, yet is close to the New England power grid so that the electricity plant can sell electricity to consumers.

If all goes well, site selection will occur by June, with permitting afterward, construction beginning by year’s end, and operations starting within two years. Although FDC had hoped to identify it by now, FDC’s technology partner will be named by early to mid-March, Christiansen said.

“It’s just a matter of being able to answer all of the questions that will come with the announcement,” he said.

None of the calculations FDC has made have eliminated any potential host community yet, he said.

“We think that when we are done, they will, but not yet,” he said.