AP News, September 3rd, 2007
A company that has been making ethanol from corn for more than 20 years says its ethanol research should allow it to squeeze 27 percent more fuel from each acre of the crop.
Poet, a privately owned ethanol producer in Sioux Falls, plans to expand its dry-mill ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, to produce alternative fuel not only from corn kernels, but also the cobs and stalks normally left behind in the fields.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who toured the company's headquarters and research lab last week, said there is only so much ethanol that can be made from corn starch.
"It's just a way of moving on to have further independence from foreign sources of energy," he said. "It's a way of doing more to clean up the environment, and it's obviously going to put money in farmers' pockets."
So-called cellulosic ethanol is basically fuel made from plants or plant waste _ something other than a corn kernel. Making fuel from this biomass costs about twice as much as cooking up corn-based fuel, government researchers say.
The U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year awarded $385 million to six companies hoping to build the nation's first big biomass-to-fuel plants. Poet is slated to receive $80 million in grant money, which is part of the Bush administration's goal of making cellulosic ethanol competitive by 2012.
Poet, formerly Broin Cos., plans to convert its 50-million-gallon-per-year Emmetsburg plant into one of the nation's first commercial cellulosic biorefineries. Once complete, it is expected to produce 125 million gallons per year _ 25 percent of them from corn cobs and fiber. That means each bushel of corn could yield 11 percent more fuel.
Jeff Broin, Poet's president and chief executive officer, said focusing its cellulosic ethanol research on the corn plant is a natural for a firm that operates 20 ethanol plants in the heart of corn country.
"All of our existing facilities are located in the Midwest," he said. "And of course they're surrounded by cellulose _ and that cellulose is actually corn stover, corn cobs."
The company has been testing the process in its Sioux Falls lab as it prepares to set up a pilot-scale model at its research center in Scotland.
Corn cobs, which are the densest part of corn, are easy to harvest and can be removed from the field without causing soil erosion or stealing soil nutrients. The company plans to harvest about 4,000 acres of cobs using various methods and equipment this fall in South Dakota.
Incentives are key to help the young cellulosic industry, Grassley said. He said there would not be a corn ethanol industry at all if Congress had not passed tax incentives 25 years ago.
"I suppose for 20 years people wondered was it really doing any good," he said. "Now you're really seeing it blossom."
Grassley said he expects the Senate to include money in the upcoming farm bill for cellulosic feedstock production incentives.
