Going Behind the Scenes at an Ethanol Plant

By JON CHAVEZ, Toledo Blade

BLISSFIELD, Mich. – At Global Ethanol Inc.’s new $80 million plant in Riga Township, Mich., the first thing one notices is the smell.

There’s no offending odor, despite a huge labyrinth of steel towers, pipes, and odd-shaped buildings that hums steadily while pumping out 163,000 gallons a day of high-octane, 200-proof ethyl alcohol.

The aroma wafting through the facility is more like that of warm corn flakes, not surprising given that the plant is making alternative vehicle fuel from corn kernels distilled using a process similar to a beer brewery’s.

Ethanol production, which began on a test basis in late February in this town 22 miles northwest of Toledo, Ohio looks and is managed like a chemical process, said Mark Fisler, the firm’s president and a 10-year veteran of the industry.

“But it is actually a biological process,” he said. Enzymes, yeasts, and other ingredients turn a bushel of corn into about 2.85 gallons of ethanol.

The technicians and others keeping tabs on the process are like doctors, trying to make sure the patient doesn’t get sick and performs at its best, and if not, they inject penicillin and amoxicillin into vats to kill germs.

A tour of the facility provided a rare look at the entire 57- hour production process. The plant is 60 percent owned by Global Ethanol, of Brisbane, Australia, and 40 percent owned by Midwest Grain Processors, of Lakota, Iowa, and Great Lakes Ethanol Inc., of Blissfield, Mich.

It uses a dry-milling distillation process, the most common in the industry, according to the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington. Dry milling grinds corn so it can be converted into ethanol, dried grains, and carbon dioxide.

Wet milling, a more expensive process, first separates corn into starch, fiber, germ, and protein, then ferments it into ethanol. Wet milling produces corn oil as a by-product.

Matt Hartwig, the trade group’s spokesman, said dry milling is the most cost-effective process and corn the most commonly used fuel source.

The nation has 124 ethanol plants, mostly clustered in the Midwest, producing about 6.5 billion gallons annually. Seventy-six more plants are under construction, and seven plants are expanding, including in Riga.

Simply put, the facility is a big oven. Plant manager Jason Veirs is the “chef” charged with correctly following a delicate “recipe” to squeeze as much ethanol from a corn kernel as current technology allows.

“You have to find that ‘sweet spot’ where you have your optimal point,” he said. “It’s a cooking process.”

When the factors are in line, Veirs hopes to squeeze 2.9 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn. On the wholesale market, ethanol fetches $1.70 to $1.90 a gallon, so the more ethanol he can distill – even if it’s an increase of just five-hundredths of a gallon – the more money the plant makes.

In addition, the plant makes a by-product called

dried distillers grain – which is corn stripped of its sugar – that is sold to livestock feed producers. Each day, the plant makes 465 tons of dried grain, most of which is shipped out in up to seven trucks or is stored in five 90-ton rail cars that are moved out every few days to cattle and poultry food processors nationwide.

On the nation’s commodities markets, dried distillers grains are selling for $90 to $110 a ton, making the 164,000 tons a year that the Riga plant can produce worth $14 million to $18 million.

(c) 2007 Evansville Courier & Press. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.