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'Other' Ethanol Plant in the Works With Richardton Buzzing, Underwood Project Still Looks Good

Posted on: Monday, 1 August 2005, 12:00 CDT

With North Dakota's first ethanol plant in two decades finally under construction, yet another is still on the horizon.

Amid much hoopla and ceremony, Red Trail Energy at Richardton had both a groundbreaking and construction start this month with plans to begin producing 50,000 gallons annually next year.

A second ethanol plant near Underwood is progressing and also may go into production next year.

The Underwood plant is a project of Headwaters Inc., a Utah company that deals in coal technology. Headwaters is partnering with Great River Energy to build an ethanol plant adjacent to Great River's Coal Creek Station power plant. The partnership will use waste steam from the coal-fired plant to cook corn into a distilled brew that also yields 50,000 gallons of ethanol a year.

It'll be the first plant like it in the country. Most plants depend on natural gas as a heat source, although the Red Trail Energy plant will burn lignite coal.

Headwaters spokesman John Ward said his company plans to make further announcements on the project next month.

"We're going through all the steps we have to go through," he said.

Those steps include securing the necessary air quality permits from the state Health Department.

Jim Semerad and Craig Thorstenson of the department's Air Quality division are reviewing Headwaters' air quality application. The application was dated June 1 and should be a fairly quick process because the project doesn't have a typical fuel-burning heat source. The air quality issues for the Headwaters project are particulate caused by milling corn and organic compounds released during distillation and fermentation.

Thorstenson said he expects that the application will be reviewed and ready for a 30-day public comment period sometime in August.

Semerad said the ethanol plant would get 60 percent of the steam it needs from Coal Creek's waste stream, but the power plant will have to burn extra coal to supply the remaining 40 percent. Even though that will be a relatively small amount of coal, Great River plans to upgrade its normal air pollution equipment to reduce emissions from burning coal.

The Underwood ethanol project will cost an estimated $65 million, but will be financed by the partnership. That's unlike many ethanol plants around the country, including Red Trail Energy. Red Trail invited investors to participate in raising $25 million in equity and, after nearly two years, met that goal this spring.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@westriv.com.)

Source: Bismarck Tribune

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