November 6, 2007

 

Top US ethanol producer to use corn cobs for ethanol 

 

 

Corn cobs, long considered field waste, now represent energy potential to ethanol producer Poet.

 

The Sioux Falls-based company, which has been making ethanol from corn for more than 20 years, is working with Ihnen and several farm-equipment manufacturers to develop ways to harvest, store and transport cobs that could one day join kernels as an alternative fuel feedstock.

 

"Cobs surround our facilities," said Jeff Broin, Poet's president and chief executive officer. "It's a natural feedstock for us."

 

Privately held Poet, formerly Broin Cos., plans to expand its 50-million-gallon-per-year dry-mill plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, to produce 125 million gallons per year - 25 percent of them from corn cobs and fiber.

 

Poet's 21 plants in six states can pump out 1.1 billion gallons of the alternative fuel, and additional biorefineries under construction or development will eventually add 375 million gallons of capacity.

 

That puts Poet just ahead of ADM - at least for now. ADM has an annual capacity of 1.07 billion gallons with another 550 million gallon under construction or development, according to the RFA.

 

With the September grand opening of its Portland, Ind., biorefinery, Poet now has the capacity to produce more corn-based ethanol than any of its competitors, including agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM), according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

 

Poet officials said the company's cellulosic ethanol research should allow it to squeeze 27 percent more fuel from each acre of the crop.

 

Farmers typically leave cobs and stalks behind in the fields, but cobs - which are the densest part of corn - can be removed without causing soil erosion or stealing soil nutrients.

 

Poet is about halfway through its harvest of 4,000 acres, using several methods to gather the cobs.

 

One method uses a John Deere 9860 STS Combine with a 12-row corn head modified to collect a mix of both kernels and broken-up cobs. The mix is then fed into a corn cob mix separator built by Salem-based Feterl Manufacturing Corp., which sorts the kernels from the cobs.

 

Randy Bauer, Feterl's president and chief executive officer, said the company spent about five months developing the prototype and is now ready to go into production design.

 

Bauer said there's also a huge cottage industry for corn cobs, which are used as an organic abrasive on metal, plastic and wood.

 

"There could be a whole new market for the product besides this," he said.

 

A second method uses a standard combine hitched with a Cob Caddy, an invention of Vernon Flamme of North Bend, Neb., that collects the cobs as they exit with the stalks and husks.

 

The kernels stay in the combine, the husks are blown back into the field and the cobs fall into the caddy, which tilts to dump the cobs into a bin or onto a pile.

 

"It's a standard combine," Flamme said. "All we're doing is saving the cobs with the wagon behind."

 

Poet will need about 275,000 acres of cobs to supply its redesigned Emmetsburg plant, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2011.

 

The US Department of Energy earlier this year awarded US$385 million to six companies hoping to build the nation's first large biomass-to-fuel plants. Poet, one of the six, is slated to receive up to US$80 million in grant money.

 

Poet finalised its agreement with the Energy Department this fall, which allows the company to move forward on project design and engineering, environmental engineering and biomass collection.