This June, our industry&rsquo;s mainstay <a href="http://www.fuelethanolworkshop.com/ema/DisplayPage.aspx?pageId=Home" target="_blank">summer conference</a> turns 30. We&rsquo;re excited about this milestone, and for fun, we&rsquo;ve loaded 12 pages of the print magazine with <a href="http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/10919/three-decades-strong" target="_blank">photos of some memorable moments</a> at the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo.&nbsp; Join our walk down memory lane with more than three dozen pictures of the people, places, awards and presentations that longtime FEW attendees will surely recognize.&nbsp;
 The 30th annual <a href="http://www.fuelethanolworkshop.com/ema/DisplayPage.aspx?pageId=Agenda1" target="_blank">FEW agenda</a> is now finalized and online. You might think that, after three decades, it would become difficult to find new ways to continue &ldquo;Linking Industry with Innovation,&rdquo; but just the opposite is true. The FEW&rsquo;s strong 2014 agenda, like each issue of this magazine, reminds us that our industry is in a state of constant change and discovery. The focus of this issue, corn oil, is a virtual study in our industry&rsquo;s predilection for progress. It&rsquo;s not that corn oil extraction itself is new&mdash;90 percent of America&rsquo;s ethanol plants are doing it&mdash;but the way it is still unfolding is fascinating. This issue looks closely at how new progressions of mechanical extraction technology, along with the aid of chemicals and enzymes, are allowing producers to develop tailored solutions to optimize oil production and recover the product inside of exacting parameters.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 In our cover story, <a href="http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/10921/beyond-corn-oil-extraction" target="_blank">&ldquo;Beyond Corn Oil Extraction,</a>"&nbsp;we learn that not only is oil recovery still advancing, but Valicor Separation Technologies LLC is doing so in a way that is in harmony with existing plant technology and &ldquo;forward compatible&rdquo; with the next-generation biofuels ambitions of so many of today&rsquo;s producers. The importance of fine-tuning corn oil extraction comes up in our cover story and again in our feature, &ldquo;<a href="http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/10918/optimizing-for-more-oil" target="_blank">Optimizing for More Corn Oil</a>.&rdquo; Senior Editor Susanne Retka Schill examines our industry&rsquo;s enterprising use of chemicals to improve oil recovery and maximize the payback on mechanical extraction systems. In addition to chemical enhancement, Retka Schill reports that a number of producers are now using an enzymatic approach to enhance oil yields, with impressive results.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
As extraction techniques are optimized, it&rsquo;s good to know the marketplace for corn oil is strong. Staff Writer Chris Hanson reports in <a href="http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/10920/ready-markets-soak-up-corn-oil" target="_blank">&ldquo;Ready Markets Soak Up Corn Oil&rdquo;</a> that corn oil from ethanol plants is now the No. 2 U.S. feedstock, behind soybean oil, for biodiesel production. Not all ethanol plants, however, are content selling corn oil; some are incorporating biodiesel production on site. In our feature, &ldquo;<a href="http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/10917/biodiesel-coming-soon-to-an-ethanol-plant-near-you" target="_blank">Biodiesel: Coming Soon to an Ethanol Plant Near You</a>,&rdquo; Biodiesel Magazine&rsquo;s Ron Kotrba catches up with two Illinois ethanol plants that are making corn-oil-to-biodiesel happen. After 30 years, it&rsquo;s simply amazing to see America&rsquo;s ethanol plants still reinvesting in change. See you at the FEW.

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BBI International's Tom Bryan introduces the June Ethanol Producer Magazine. The issue contains a look-back at past International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expos as well as several stories about corn oil, which is theme for the month. 

Reinvesting in Change

As President Obama and the U.S. EPA deliberate what to do with the renewable fuel standard, the U.S. ethanol industry understands that no matter what happens with that program, we will still need to build demand to assure continued growth and stability. Increasingly, that new demand is coming from beyond our shores. Last year, the United States exported 621.5 million gallons of ethanol to countries both large and small and from every corner of the globe.&nbsp; Canada, the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates represent just a handful of the different markets U.S. producers sent product in 2013.&nbsp; Clearly, the demand for high-octane, low-carbon ethanol knows no border.&nbsp; U.S.-produced ethanol is now the lowest-cost liquid transportation fuel on the planet.&nbsp; Any nation desiring to give their consumers some relief at the pump knows they need our fuel. The Renewable Fuels Association is at the forefront of the effort to expand ethanol markets abroad.&nbsp; Last October, the RFA led a trip to northern Brazil through the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Brazil-U.S. Business Council, setting up matchmaking sessions to connect U.S. ethanol producers with businesses looking to import the low-cost fuel. That trip alone led to $20 million in ethanol sales, with another $9 million in the works. That was a resoundingly successful venture and additional trips are being planned as we look to expand exports into Asia. We will continue to push forward into new markets. The RFA has created an Export Enhancement program with Growth Energy and the U.S. Grains Council.&nbsp; We are committed to seizing upon new market opportunities.&nbsp; This is only the beginning.
Author: Bob Dinneen President and CEO, Renewable Fuels Association 202-289-3835

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The Renewable Fuels Association is working to expand ethanol export markets, says Bob Dinneen, president and CEO. For example, the group has led trips abroad to  connect U.S. ethanol producers with new customers. 

New Horizons 

The U.S. ethanol industry is energized (rightly so) by the uptick in the ethanol export market. At the same time, it is unfortunate that we rejoice over a growing export market when we consume 130 billion gallons of gasoline annually in America. The question that needs to be asked is why would we have to export anything when ethanol is such a small percentage of the total market? Ethanol is restricted to a 10 percent blend level,&nbsp; in many cases, while battling tooth and nail to achieve a 15 percent blend over strong opposition, when other countries like Brazil utilize much higher blends, trouble free. It&rsquo;s not a technical issue, it&rsquo;s a political issue and even the politicians who side with the oil industry know it&rsquo;s not a technical issue. There has been ample fodder for the anti-ethanol folks, food vs. fuel, deforestation, land use, consumer concerns, drivability and more, all generously provided by the oil industry under the cover of independent research, humanitarian concern and consumer protection. These are fabricated tales of the highest order, yet for those who want to see the demise of the ethanol industry, it&rsquo;s all the information they need to wage war on ethanol and agriculture in general. There is no need to concern oneself with the facts, you can easily ignore the truth and hide from reality, because you have have been well-armed with tales of woe to help make your case on behalf of the oil industry. As the saying goes, &ldquo;Lies repeated often enough become fact.&rdquo; Whether it&rsquo;s food, ethanol, plastics or pharmaceuticals, American agriculture has a leg up on oil. Professor Thomas Johnson of the University of Missouri has co-authored a paper on the benefits to rural economies of a robust bioenergy industry. This includes not only biofuels but a range of bio-manufactured products. The rural economy of America is poised for great things and biofuels&nbsp; are just tip of the iceberg. It&rsquo;s time that agriculture assumes its rightful place in the economic future of America. Not just as a provider of food, but as an environmentally responsible provider of a wide range of products that are now often petroleum-based. We have to move away from the idea that crops can only be used to feed people, we need to abandon the fear of genetically modified crops that can significantly improve yields&nbsp; and shed the shackles that have bound us to the antiquated belief that if you use crops for anything other than feeding people, it&rsquo;s somehow a sin against humanity. Agriculture provides a pathway to a bright, domestic and economically sound future. When the oil wells today are nothing more than rusted relics of the past, American farmers will still be producing&nbsp; an exciting array of renewable and environmentally responsible products, while helping feed the world. That&rsquo;s the way I see it!
Author: Mike Bryan Chairman, BBI International mbryan@bbiinternational.com

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Limiting ethanol content to 10 percent isn't a technical issue, writes BBI International's Mike Bryan. It's a political issue, plain and simple. 

Lies, Repeated Often Enough, Become Fact

We often talk about National Security in broad terms. We discuss the financial implications of relying on foreign oil, or the economic risks of importing our energy, but we often overlook the greatest national interest&mdash;our service members.&nbsp; When we focus on our national security, we often forget that our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters are the ones who are directly responsible for carrying out the task of preserving and protecting our freedoms. Regardless of political views or opinions, we can agree that the selfless actions of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen throughout the recent conflicts deserve our honor and respect. As Memorial Day approaches, I wanted to focus on what Growth Energy members have done to support our service members and veterans. Last year, Growth Energy launched the Fueling Our Forces program, which raised more than $100,000 through our membership, for the Armed Forces Foundation. This year, we are on track to far exceed that amount. The AFF is dedicated to supporting active-duty military personnel, National Guardsmen, Reservists, military families and veterans. Since 2001, the AFF has provided more than $75 million in assistance by covering travel, hotel rooms, home mortgages, car payments and everyday bills to enable families to stay at the side of their loved ones sides during treatment and recovery from wounds suffered during war.&nbsp; With the launch of the Help Save Our Troops campaign, the AFF proactively educates Americans about the hidden wounds of war, including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, and advocates for those troops and veterans who have suffered these hidden wounds. The ultimate goal of Help Save Our Troops is to reduce military suicides.&nbsp; Growth Energy is truly dedicated to those who defend us, but we also seek to minimize the need for them to deploy abroad. By reducing the need for foreign energy, we reduce the potential for future conflicts in tremulous regions to protect petroleum imports. Our members work tirelessly to produce a domestic fuel that not only strengthens our energy independence, but also develops jobs and preserves our environment. Biofuels are essential to the future energy security of our nation. They strengthen our economy, create jobs that cannot be outsourced and revitalize our rural communities throughout the nation. We cannot continue to use our military forces for the protection of foreign oil imports. The current system simply is not sustainable and costs our nation billions each year by exporting our money to foreign oil magnates who artificially manipulate the cost of their product. We, as a nation, then ask our military men and women to protect the shipping lanes for that oil, through treacherous regions, costing us millions more in blood and treasure. We cannot afford to continue importing foreign oil. We cannot afford to divert our essential national security assets, purely for energy security. By continuing to promote and validate ethanol as a viable alternative to our oil addiction, we help protect our nation and reduce the potential danger for our fighting men and women. I invite you to continue your support of our servicemen and women and to keep fighting for our nation&rsquo;s energy future. &nbsp; Author: retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark Co-chair of the Growth Energy Board of Directors 202-545-4000 info@growthenergy.org

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Growth Energy's members have supported service members, veterans and their families with more than $75 million  since 2001. The group is dedicated to serving those that serve this country, writes retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark. 

Serving Those Who Serve

President Eisenhower didn&rsquo;t know how right he was when he said &ldquo;Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you&rsquo;re a thousand miles from a corn field.&rdquo;&nbsp; Today, thanks in large part to ethanol, plows and pencils have been replaced by no-till and precision agriculture. The unrivaled speed of technology adoption in agriculture and biofuels is just another benefit of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). More than any policy enacted by Congress, the RFS has spurred the production of corn, ethanol and ethanol coproducts more efficiently and with less environmental impact. While oil is becoming more difficult to find, expensive to drill and harmful to the environment, ethanol is becoming more sustainable, efficient and cleaner. Today, farmers apply fewer inputs to produce larger crops on the same land. In 2013, they produced nearly 160 bushels of corn per acre, twice as much corn per acre of land than when the first cell phones were introduced in the 1980s. A recent University of Illinois-Chicago study found that as corn farmers and ethanol producers continue to innovate, ethanol results in 60 percent fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than gasoline, and, state-of-the-art technology has improved ethanol&rsquo;s energy balance to a more than 2 to 1 ratio.&nbsp; Meanwhile, the days of easy oil are over. Finding oil compressed-tightly within rocks and far below the land or sea is more energy-intensive than ever before.&nbsp; As ethanol has helped restore profitability to agricultural production, farmers can afford to adopt new technologies and practices to conserve water and soil and produce more bushels of grain using fewer inputs. According to a survey by Purdue University, the use of auto-steer for fertilizer application has increased 11 percent and auto-steer is now in use on nearly two-thirds of farms. Precision agriculture and GPS auto-steer technology have saved North Dakota&rsquo;s farmers nearly 12 percent of fuel costs, according to North Dakota State University. Biotech crops have also played a role in helping farmers become more efficient. According to the USDA, about half the total land used to grow crops (169 million acres) in the U.S. was planted to biotech varieties in 2013. These biotech crop traits have saved farmers time, reduced insecticide use and enabled the use of less toxic herbicides. In 2013, more than 18 million farmers in 27 countries planted biotech crops, with adoption rates increasing more than a hundredfold since 1996. For the first time in 2013, 123,500 acres of drought-tolerant corn was planted and more drought-tolerant crop varieties are in the pipeline. Ask seed companies and farmers and they&rsquo;d tell you none of this progress was possible without ethanol. Farm families&rsquo; home place is also their workplace. They drink the water and eat the food from their own land. In order to fulfill the hope and dream of virtually every farmer that the next generation succeed them on the home place, the first priority is to leave the farm in better condition than when the last generation passed it on. Before 1940, the organic matter contained in crop residues was often mistakenly considered problematic, and efforts to rid fields of this organic matter were called &ldquo;trash management.&rdquo; Today, however, thanks to better research and conservation practices such as no-till, scientists and farmers know that crop residues, such as corn stalks leftover from harvest, increase the amount of organic matter and contribute to the overall health of soil. Modern-day farmers understand that organic matter is the lifeblood of soil and scientists now consider the content of soil organic matter as the most important measure of productivity. Soil with large stocks of organic matter absorb and hold more water and crop nutrients, resist erosion and grow higher yields using less fertilizer. There is strong emerging evidence that farmers who utilize no-till to plant corn are able to increase soil health and even sequester carbon by leaving crop residue on their fields. In fact, soil test databases show that increases in organic matter in corn fields can reduce corn ethanol&rsquo;s GHG footprint by 60 percent or more compared to gasoline. Farmers and ethanol producers will continue making these important improvements as long as federal policy doesn&rsquo;t punish those of us who are naturally-driven to innovate. This is just another reason why we need to keep the RFS intact. &nbsp; Author: Brian Jennings Executive Vice President American Coalition for Ethanol 605-334-3381 bjennings@ethanol.org

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Farmers have adopted new technologies at an unrivaled speed, prompted by the RFS, writes Brian Jennings. Ethanol production has helped the agricultural sector be more profitable, providing opportunities for adoption of new practices. 

Naturally Driven to Innovate

There are signs that the European Union this year will see an increase in fuel ethanol production that outpaces the growth we have had the previous three years. The expectation is that we will see around a 7 percent increase in output.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s still modest compared to the timeframe 2007 to 2010 when we had double-digit growth numbers. It not necessarily a sign of getting back to the double-digit growth era but it is encouraging that under very difficult market and political circumstances industry output for this year might be above the average of the past three years. Market circumstances are indeed difficult this year even though imports are lower and grain prices have come down considerably compared to previous years. There are basically two reasons for making it a difficult market. First, EU member states are slowing down the pace with which they increase the blending rate of biofuels. That is disappointing. Also, due to a number of reasons, gasoline consumption is decreasing. Less gasoline consumption means, in most cases, less ethanol consumption than expected. The lower level of imports and relative low grain prices may play to our benefit but the market remains oversupplied. Even though my good friend Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, claims that Europe needs imports to be able to comply with demand, he seems to forget that the EU has around 7.5 billion liters of installed production capacity for fuel use. Demand is not even reaching 5 billion. The oversupply situation has caused prices to come down for about the past year. Recently, the spread between the supply of T1 (imported, duty not yet paid) and T2 (imported/domestic, duty paid) became positive for the first time ever. Some European producers are now also exporting but others had to shut down some of their production lines. All in all, a rather mixed picture but a remarkable one. 2014 will also be a crucial year both at political and policy level. This month European elections for a new Parliament will result in an important shift in political powers. The expectation is that an influx of more nationalistic minded politicians could undermine the agenda of renewables.
In the second half of this year, the European Parliament will appoint a new European Commission. This new commission will propose a major set of bills that will determine the energy and climate policy for the 2020s decade. The challenges for the industry are substantial, considering that the European Commission in force has already put plans on the table for how the post-2020s policy should look. These plans are not to our liking, as I already indicated two months ago. Even though the Commission proposes a renewable energy target of 27 percent by 2030, it has moved away from continuing a policy that has worked well in the past four years. It is crucial that the industry succeed in convincing the new Parliament and the new Commission that no continuation of a renewable energy target for transport means more greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector, no real investment and production of cellulosic ethanol and a missed opportunity to create more jobs, especially missed opportunities in the rural sector. Finding new biofuel champions is what we need to do. And we had better find these champions sooner than later. Part of that exercise is a carefully orchestrated information campaign that needs to underline all the benefits of ethanol and will deal, once and for all, with all the myths that have been created around our industry. The biggest challenge, however, is finding closure on the indirect land use change saga. If we are unable to do so, the European Commission, many members of the European Parliament as well as several nongovernmental stakeholders will keep pushing for ending support for biofuel use after 2020. 2014 could well turn out to become the year that determines the long-term future of biofuels in Europe. Author: Robert Vierhout Secretary-general, ePURE Vierhout@epure.org

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This year is crucial from a political and policy perspective, writes Rob Vierhout, of ePURE. The industry needs to convince the new Parliament and Commission that the renewable energy target must be continued. 

A Remarkable and Crucial Year

Chad Campbell was recently promoted to plant manager of Aventine Renewable Energy Inc.&rsquo;s plants in Aurora, Neb. He will be responsible for overseeing future operations, including repair and maintenance of the 45 MMgy Nebraska Energy LLC plant and the 108 MMgy Aventine Aurora West Delta-T plant. Campbell has eight years of experience in the biofuels industry. Aventine also recently promoted Chandi Earnest as director of quality control for the company&rsquo;s 165 MMgy wet mill and dry mill plants in Pekin, Ill. Earnest joined Aventine in 2008 as a fermentation specialist and lab manager at the Mt. Vernon, Ind., facility. She previously worked for Lallemand Inc. as a technical sales representative. &nbsp; The National Corn Growers Association has announced that Rick Tolman will step down as CEO of the NCGA at the end of September. He has been with the organization for 14 years, and has spent 37 years working in agriculture. The NCGA is expected to announce members of a CEO search committee soon. Valero Energy Corp. has announced that Bill Klesse will step down as the company&rsquo;s CEO, effective May 1. He will remain a Valero director and chairman of the board. Joe Gorder, who was named Valero&rsquo;s president and chief operating officer in 2012, will take on the role of CEO. He has also been elected a director by the board of directors and will join the board immediately. Klesse spent his entire 45-year career with Valero and its predecessor companies. Gorder has been with Valero and its predecessors for 27 years. The company also recently announced that Gene Edwards, its executive vice president and chief development officer, will retire effective April 30. Edwards began his career with Valero in 1982. The American Coalition for Ethanol has elected its 2014 board officers. Ron Alverson, founding chairman and current board member of Dakota Ethanol was re-elected president of the ACE board of directors. Duane Kristensen, general manager of Chief Ethanol Fuels, was elected vice president of the board. Dave Sovereign of Golden Grain Energy was elected secretary. Archer Daniels Midland Co. has promoted Juan Luciano to president. He is the 12th person to serve as president in the company&rsquo;s 112- history, and assumes the role in addition to his position as chief operating officer. Luciano oversees the commercial and production activities of ADM&rsquo;s corn, oilseeds and agricultural services businesses, as well as its research, project management and risk management functions. He will continue to report to ADM Chairman and CEO Patricia Woertz. Luciano joined ADM in 2011 after spending 25 years at The Dow Chemical Co., where he most recently served as executive vice president and president of the performance division. Arisdyne Systems Inc. has add three new members to its team to prepare the company for new installations, service the existing customer base and continue to build its reputation as a leading technology provider in the field of ethanol and oil enhancement with its proprietary Controlled Flow Cavitation technology. The new team members include Nick Berchtold, chief financial officer; Andrea Wearsch, marketing and business development associate; and James Wolfe, field service engineer. Greg Krissek was recently appointed CEO of the Kansas Corn Growers Association, Kansas Corn Commission and Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association. He has nearly 25 years of experience in agriculture, ethanol, renewable energy and public policy. Krissek previously served as assistant secretary at the Kansas Department of Agriculture, director of operations at Kansas Corn and Kansas Grain Sorghum, director of government affairs at ICM Inc. and manager of Kennedy and Coe LLC. He replaces Jere White, who announced his retirement in February.&nbsp; Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy has joined the Renewable Fuels Association. The company operates a 120 MMgy ethanol plant in Council Bluffs, Iowa. In addition to ethanol, the facility produces more than 330,000 tons of dried distillers grains annually. SIRE also produces corn oil coproduct. The company was formed in 2005 and began commercial production in early 2009.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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Business Briefs

Valicor Separation Technologies LLC has developed a new modular system that doesn&rsquo;t just extract one coproduct, it fractionates multiple coproducts, including more distillers corn oil as well as fiber and high protein animal feed. The company announced in late February that it had received a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office notice of allowance for its Valicor Stillage Fractionation Technology, known as VFrac.&nbsp; Valicor already has Corn Oil Separation Systems, its first-generation corn oil separations technology, installed at 40 ethanol plants. As of March, the company was building its VFrac modular system at its Dexter, Mich., facility in advance of instillation at two dry mill ethanol plants. &ldquo;Following midyear startup, we should have some good operating data on both the ICM plants as well as the Delta Ts,&rdquo; says Chris Mahoney, director of Valicor&rsquo;s advanced separations group. The $4.5 million fractionation system has a 12- to 18- month payback. In addition, it&rsquo;s complimentary to fine grind technology. Ethanol plants with front-end fine grind systems already installed won&rsquo;t have issues with higher suspended solids, or fines, and can gain the benefits of VFrac with one fewer module installed. &ldquo;It actually reduces the cost of our system,&rdquo; Mahoney says. The company got its start in 1997 as Solution Recovery Services, separating and purifying industrial fluids. Today, Valicor is 100 percent employee-owned and has continued working in the industrial space while also diversifying into food and beverages, as well as the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. About eight years ago, the company began working on biofuels technologies, starting with biodiesel and then moving into ethanol, says Tom Czartoski, president, CEO and co-founder of the company. Specifically, it was the company&rsquo;s work on separation technologies for algae that led Valicor down the path of corn oil recovery. &ldquo;We put a considerable effort into microalgae, and microalgae was an interesting challenge by way of a single cell that contains proteins, carbohydrates and oils. And we focused on developing a technology to accommodate those compounds, or separate them into streams,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Those developments led us back into the ethanol space to apply that technique to separating proteins and separating oil.&rdquo; Big Benefits In developing its second generation corn oil technology, Valicor achieved several goals. The first was to develop a process that works outside the midevaporator, to avoid any confusion with existing corn oil technologies. As a result, VFRAC separates corn oil from stillage, not concentrated stillage. &ldquo;We wanted to move away from the patent litigation and all the legal issues that surrounded all that,&rdquo; says Douglas Corey, industry manager, who started working for the company when there were only eight employees. After speaking to ethanol producers, Valicor identified key concerns for the new technology. The first was maximizing coproduct revenue, not just through corn oil recovery, but other coproducts as well. Another goal was improving ethanol fermentation. The energy efficiency and operation of the evaporator train were also targets. Finally, the company aimed for preparing for the next stage of cellulosic and clean fiber technologies, once they become a reality. &ldquo;We call it a forward compatible technology because where it is in the whole stillage stream it really lets you get at those cool things in the kernel of corn,&rdquo; says Phil Schoof, senior vice president. The technology&rsquo;s hydrothermal treatment allows for separation of more corn oil. In fact, VFrac can pull out 1.2 pounds of corn oil per bushel of corn. And that&rsquo;s without the use of any additional chemicals to increase yield. &ldquo;This technology does away with that operating expense need,&rdquo; Schoof says. A key feature of the technology is tunability&mdash;or the option to separate more or less corn oil, depending on market demands. Most customers only want to take out about 1 pound per bushel of corn oil, leaving 7 percent fat content in the distillers grains, Mahoney says. That allows plants serving different feed markets, which prefer different fat levels in distillers grains, to aim for different corn oil content targets, adds James Bleyer, Valicor program manager, leader of the company&rsquo;s biofuels R&amp;D division and inventor of VFrac. The technology is also tunable in the amount of high protein meal, or VPro, it separates. This additional coproduct is similar to corn gluten meal produced at a wet mill. &ldquo;We want to pull out enough protein to create this high-value protein product without being deleterious to the existing DDG production,&rdquo; Bleyer says. &ldquo;In other words, the existing DDGs have a certain specification that has to be met and, just like we don&rsquo;t want to pull out too much of the oil, we don&rsquo;t want to pull out too much of the protein, so that DDG won&rsquo;t meet that spec.&rdquo;&nbsp; Separating out the high protein VPro reduces total distillers grains volume by about 10 percent, says Jennifer Aurandt, technology development program manager. The new coproduct contains about 50 percent protein, about 8 percent oil and is lower in fiber than distillers grains. Early feed trials done at the University of Georgia show VPro has higher total metabolizable energy and increased lysine availability. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re excited about this high protein meal and the fact that we can tune it to what the industry likes,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;If they want less oil, like corn gluten meal, if they want more oil, whatever the animal nutritionist needs to formulate their diet.&rdquo; The separations process also creates stickwater, a low-solids liquid stream, fractionated from the whole stillage, Bleyer says. Recycling stickwater in the evaporator train, for example, has advantages over using thin stillage, which makes evaporators prone to fouling and less energy efficient. Stickwater can also be recycled to the front of the ethanol plant, where the reduced solids mean the ethanol plant can process more corn while maintaining the same target solids levels in the cook process, he said. All in all, the VFrac technology allows for better water balance. In fact, sending cleaner recycled water to the front of the plant actually results in better fermentation, Mahoney says. While the number can vary, depending on the amount of residual starches a plant has, testing has shown the technology can result in a 1 to even 2 percent increase in ethanol yield.
Finally, the technology is able to remove fiber, which can be used as a cellulosic ethanol feedstock, among other things. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s other high-value opportunities for that fiber, other than cellulosic ethanol, currently under development, Bleyer says. &ldquo;It could be an important coproduct for an ethanol plant in the future.&rdquo; Valicor is continuing R&amp;D in separating different components of the corn kernel and different applications for the coproducts. On the corn oil side, currently, the two big demand drivers for the coproduct are the animal feed industry, specifically poultry, and biodiesel plants. &ldquo;If we can make products that are better for either one of those customers, that&rsquo;s a great value add,&rdquo; Aurandt says.
Corey considers VFrac part of the next evolution of the ethanol industry. &ldquo;I think you are going to see that the dry mill ethanol market, the longer it exists, the more it matures, will move the coproduct stream much closer to what you find in a wet mill ethanol market,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only the natural progression.&rdquo; Author: Holly Jessen Managing Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine 701-738-4946 hjessen@bbiinternational.com

MORE THAN CORN OIL: Company co-founder Tom Czartoski stands in Valicor's Dexter, Mich., facility. 

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GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY:  Jennifer Aurandt conducts fermentation trials to evaluate residual starch and other process enhancements. 

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HOT COPRODUCT:  Technician Olivia Hayden analyzes corn oil quality in Valicorâ€™s analytical lab.  

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PROTEIN GOLDMINE:  Tom Sibson weighs out a sample of VPro, high protein coproduct, similar to corn gluten meal, currently under development as an animal feed product. 

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A new corn oil technology developed by a fluid purification company offers multiple coproducts, improved ethanol yield and water balance, and other benefits.  

Beyond Corn Oil Extraction

As production of corn oil has increased at ethanol plants, utilization by biodiesel plants, the animal feed industry and the export market have kept pace. Looking specifically at biodiesel, between 2011 and 2013, use of corn oil as a biodiesel feedstock grew by a whopping 245 percent, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration numbers. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s significant demand today for corn oil, and that&rsquo;s reflected in the pricing,&rdquo; says Joseph Riley, general manager of FEC Solutions, which began buying corn oil in 2005 or 2006. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a premium for corn oil today, and I think that&rsquo;s going to continue to be a driver in the market. I think, relatively speaking, it&rsquo;s a short-term opportunity for the feed market, and biodiesel will continue to price it out of the feed market.&rdquo; Prior to 2000, the corn oil market was relatively small. It grew rapidly in 2008, however. That was the year that Renewable Products Marketing Group and other companies began marketing ethanol coproducts. Currently, RPMG markets corn oil for 12 plants that produce more than 170 million pounds of corn oil annually.
Main Markets Corn oil&rsquo;s role as a popular feedstock choice in the biodiesel arena is quite apparent and growing, which made 2013 a great year for corn oil-derived biodiesel. More than 1.04 billion pounds of corn oil were utilized for biodiesel production by the end of 2013, an EIA biodiesel production report showed, making it the second most popular feedstock choice. During the second half of 2013, corn oil finally broke the 100 million pound mark not once, but on three separate occasions. Corn oil producers have options to sell within local markets, as well as destination markets, says Riley. Locally, the oil can be transported via truck to nearby biodiesel plants or feed producers. In the case of Marquis Energy, the company is located relatively close to one of Renewable Energy Group&rsquo;s biodiesel plants, says Tom Marquis, director of marketing at Marquis Energy LLC, which installed corn oil separation units in 2008. REG is one of the leading North American biodiesel producers with a 257 MMgy capacity and has been using the feedstock since 2007. &ldquo;Our freight to their facility is pretty reasonable, so that has been the best market for our plant,&rdquo; Marquis added. In order to send the oil to other markets within the United States or to export it to foreign markets, producers not located on a rail line would need to utilize a transloading station to transfer the oil from a truck to a railcar. Once the oil is in the railcar, it can be transported greater distances to biodiesel plants and exporting facilities in other states, such as Louisiana and California, he adds. &ldquo;The Californian biodiesel market is favoring corn oil from a carbon-related standpoint.&rdquo; &ldquo;These renewable diesel plants in Louisiana are big plants and some of their feedstock is corn oil,&rdquo; Marquis explains. The Diamond Green Diesel facility, a joint venture between Valero Energy Corporation and Darling International Inc., uses corn oil with other feedstocks to produce 137 MMgy of renewable diesel, he added. &ldquo;So those are big, multifeedstock plants, but even if a portion of it is corn oil, that&rsquo;s still a lot of demand for corn oil.&rdquo; Some foreign markets are also beginning to use the extracted corn oil for biofuel production. For instance, Neste Oil, uses the corn oil to help produce its NExBTL renewable diesel fuel. The company added corn oil as one of its biofuel feedstocks in July and produced more than 1.2 million metric tons of renewable fuel using distillers corn oil, along with other waste and residual materials. Although biodiesel production seems to be the hottest market for corn oil, its use as a feed additive cannot be easily dismissed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Right now, our biggest customer is the biodiesel market. They are a very large user of distillers corn oil,&rdquo; says Matt Niemeyer, corn oil merchandising manager at Renewable Products Marketing Group LLC. &ldquo;Feed is a close second.&rdquo; Poultry feed applications seem to be the most popular sector of the feed market, but other groups are beginning to emerge, such as swine feedlots looking for another fat source Niemeyer says. &ldquo;Perdue Farms Inc. has been a pretty big buyer of corn oil into poultry feed, I believe,&rdquo; Marquis recalls, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve shipped some railcars to another poultry operation.&rdquo; &ldquo;The good thing about it is that it is a vegetable-based source of energy versus an animal fat or animal-based product,&rdquo; Niemeyer says. Spreading that data through word-of-mouth and research to potential consumers is one way corn oil&rsquo;s popularity has been growing, he adds. With corn oil meeting the growing needs of the biodiesel and feed industry, producers may need to examine ways to improve the handling and transportation of the material, especially during colder winter months. There may be some improvements in how the industry handles corn oil to maintain its quality in order to become a better export possibility, Marquis says. &ldquo;There&rsquo;d be more potential for export if there were ways to maintain quality.&rdquo; Novel Uses Although the potential for corn oil exists in other markets, it is not yet widely being taken advantage of.&nbsp; Some are thinking of the edible corn oil market, however, advancing into that market would require greater regulation, processing and, of course, capital spending. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of cleanup, refining and deodorizing that would need to occur,&rdquo; Riley explains. &ldquo;It would have to be an identical product to a shelf-stable Mazola oil, so there would be significant processing and loss to be able to achieve that standard. The FDA and USDA would also have to give their approval.&rdquo; While breaking into the food-grade market seems quite intimidating, there may be additional opportunities in other industrial chemical markets. One possibility is pesticide and fungicide applications for organic farming and greenhouse applications. California-based, JH Biotech manufactures and researches biotechnologies for safer farming applications. It produces the GC-3 organic fungicide and GC-Mite organic insecticide using corn oil. Unlike petroleum-based pesticides and fungicides, the corn oil pesticides provide the user a much safer application. With the petroleum pesticides, the user usually needs to be properly trained and licensed by the state and wear multiple items of protective clothing, says Donald Lester, product manager at JH Biotech. &ldquo;As a manufacturer, you have to go through a lot more testing and approval processes from the EPA to get them on the market.&rdquo; Regarding extra processing, corn oil does not have to be a certain grade before being used in pesticide or fungicide production, Lester says.&nbsp; &ldquo;All pesticides have to be approved by the EPA and they have a list of what they call generally recognized as safe ingredients that you can put into pesticides. If you use everything on that list, it makes it really easy for a manufacturer to get the product registered, and corn oil is on the list.&rdquo; Corn oil, which can be combined with other ingredients, will kill soft-bodied insects by plugging up breathing tubes on their body, Lester says. The oil can also combat powdery mildew disease that can affect numerous types of crops, such as squash, cucumbers and melons. &ldquo;It puts an oily coating on the leaf, then the fungus doesn&rsquo;t get the chemical signals it needs to find its way into the plant,&rdquo; Lester explains. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty simple, but it&rsquo;s pretty effective.&rdquo; Some of the biggest customers in this arena are commercial-scale, organic farmers and people who tend small, organic gardens. Medicinal marijuana farmers also prefer using the pesticide due to its safety, Lester says. &ldquo;They grow indoors so the humidity is very bad; they don&rsquo;t ventilate a lot so you got the powdery mildew fungus growing in there, and they usually get insect problems, usually with aphids. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t want to spray indoors with a bunch of toxic stuff, so they always use the organics.&rdquo; Currently, California is the biggest, organic producing and consuming state, Lester says. &ldquo;These corn oil-based products will be used on pretty much any organic crop. Everything from all the high-end berry crops to vegetables.&rdquo; Author: Chris Hanson Staff Writer, Ethanol Producer Magazine 701-738-4970 chanson@bbiinternational.com

BIODIESEL INPUT: Marquis Energy LLC markets some of the corn oil it produces to one of Renewable Energy Groupâ€™s biodiesel plants. 

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OTHER FUELS:   Corn oil can also be used as a feedstock for renewable diesel, providing another outlet for the ethanol coproduct. 

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MOLD CONTROL:   Corn oil has potential to help address powdery mildew disease in organic farming applications. 


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BIG IN BIODIESEL:  A sample of corn oil sits next to Renewable Energy Group Inc. biodiesel produced from the ethanol coproduct. 


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Distillers corn oil, produced at the majority of ethanol plants today, is in high demand.

Ready Markets Soak Up Corn Oil

Throughout its first decade, the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo&rsquo;s well-known acronym&mdash;FEW&mdash;was truly apropos. To say it was a small conference back then would have been an understatement. The FEW began in the summer of 1985 as a 40-person gathering in St. Louis. Those who were there remember the workshop being more of a technical retreat for a fledgling industry than a global ethanol production forum. There were no exhibitors. There was no elaborately decorated general session stage. There weren&rsquo;t even breakout sessions. It was a one-room meeting for a devoted group of industry colleagues who believed in ethanol and wanted to see the industry grow. &ldquo;The technical fellowship that grew out of the early workshops and conferences such as FEW is one of the strengths that still catalyzes the efficiency that this industry strives for today,&rdquo; says Bob Sutthoff, technical sales director at Enzyme Development Corp. and the person who spearheaded the FEW in its early years.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Growth would not come quickly, for the ethanol industry or the FEW. In the decade that followed that inaugural FEW huddle, the conference remained small, growing in step with the unhurried expansion of the U.S. ethanol industry. The event&rsquo;s momentum picked up in the &rsquo;90s as 200 people attended in 1993, about 400 in 1997, and nearly 700 in 1999. Year by year the numbers picked up as modern dry mill corn ethanol plants were being constructed across the Corn Belt. In 2002, the FEW reached a tipping point, becoming a 1,000-person event with deep international reach.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the half-decade that followed, the ethanol industry grew at a whirlwind pace, and so did the conference. Nearly 3,500 people attended the FEW in Milwaukee in 2006 as the ethanol plant construction boom hit stride. The conference reached its attendance high mark in 2007 when 5,000 people returned to St. Louis, followed by 4,000 attendees in Nashville in 2008. By the spring of 2009, however, the industry&rsquo;s rapid pace of growth had fallen off dramatically. The brunt of the banking collapse and the onset of the Great Recession hit the ethanol industry hard, but the industry didn&rsquo;t abandon its favorite summer gathering. More than 2,100 industry professionals showed up in Denver for the 2009 FEW, establishing a new normal attendance. Despite the industry&rsquo;s challenging times, the resolute commitment of its leading producers, service providers and technology companies ensured the show&rsquo;s ongoing success.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Constancy has defined the FEW since 2009, as it has attracted over 2,000 attendees and 350 exhibitors five years running. More importantly, the FEW draws more than 500 ethanol plant personnel each year&mdash;principally management&mdash;living up to its billing as the place &ldquo;Where Producers Meet.&rdquo; Today, the FEW remains the largest, longest-running ethanol event in the world, representing an ethanol industry that, in the U.S. alone, is a $44 billion industry capable of producing 14 billion gallons of ethanol annually.
This year's FEW will be held in Indianapolis, Ind., June 9-12. Early bird registrationends April 28. Visit <a href="http://www.fuelethanolworkshop.com/" target="_blank">www.ethanolworkshop.com</a> for details.
The Stages of FEW As FEW attendance has grown, particularly from 2002 to present day, the scale and scope of its general sessions also expanded. Each year, BBI&rsquo;s program team reserves one or two &ldquo;big topic&rdquo; issues for the general session. It has become a tradition to include keynote speeches from high-profile industry leaders like RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen and Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis, who will keynote this year&rsquo;s FEW in Indianapolis on June 10. It&rsquo;s also become customary to feature ethanol plant general managers and other industry thought leaders on the show&rsquo;s big stage each June. Here&rsquo;s a look at some memorable general session moments from the past decade.&nbsp;&nbsp; 
Recognizing Our Best Seeing an opportunity for the ethanol industry to recognize individuals who attain considerable technical success or otherwise dedicate their career to the advancement of the ethanol industry, BBI International began its FEW awards tradition in 2000, presenting the first Award of Excellence to Raphael Katzen, the late founder of Katzen International. The following year, Dick Gadomski of Process Systems Inc. received the first Distinguished Service Award (now called the High Octane Award), and the FEW awards tradition was born. In the past 13 years, the FEW has awarded 21 industry professionals with either the Award of Excellence or the High Octane Award, the former recognizing individuals who have made significant contributions to the ethanol industry through their research or technology, and the latter recognizing a person whose passion and unstoppable pursuits have significantly benefited the ethanol industry. From 2000 to 2006, the awards were presented on an alternating basis. Starting in 2007, both awards are now presented annually. Last year&rsquo;s recipients were Kevin Hicks of the USDA&rsquo;s Agricultural Research Service (Award of Excellence) and Dan Schwartzkopf of ICM Inc. (High Octane Award).
The deadline for this year's awards nomination process is May 9. Visit <a href="http://www.fuelethanolworkshop.com/ema/DisplayPage.aspx?pageId=FEW_Awards" target="_blank">www.fuelethanolworkshop.com</a> and click onAwards for more information.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
The Expo Experience The FEW expo is the largest ethanol industry trade show experience in the world, with more than 2,000 people participating each year. Notably, more than 500 upper-level ethanol plant personnel&mdash;one fourth of the total attendance&mdash;go to the FEW seeking new opportunities and tailored solutions to the unique challenges they face. The event has been named one of Tradeshow Week&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fastest 50&rdquo; expos, and today features more than 350 exhibitors, including suppliers and technology providers, equipment manufacturers and other service providers such as ethanol and coproduct marketers, risk management companies and providers of ethanol plant financial services. Here&rsquo;s a look at some notable FEW expo views and moments.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
Technical Talks The FEW is perhaps best known for its informative technical breakout sessions. The format of the event&rsquo;s concurrent sessions has changed over the years, but the aim of its content&mdash;and the criteria of its presentations&mdash;has remained constant. Still &ldquo;Linking Industry with Innovation,&rdquo; the FEW&rsquo;s breakout sessions include four tracks, 24 panels and over 100 speakers and moderators. Tracks include: Production and Operations; Leadership and Financial Management; Coproducts and Product Diversification; and Cellulosic and Advanced Ethanol.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
The 2014 FEW technical sessions are now online. Visit <a href="http://www.fuelethanolworkshop.com/ema/DisplayPage.aspx?pageId=Agenda1" target="_blank">www.fuelethanolworkshop.com</a> and click on Agenda to view the program.
Going Places&nbsp;&nbsp; Outside of the expo hall and panel sessions, FEW attendees enjoy the show&rsquo;s rich tradition of visiting nearby ethanol plants&mdash;before or after the main conference&mdash;and then winding down at the conference&rsquo;s relaxed closing night event. For many, attending FEW special events is an important part of the overall conference experience. It&rsquo;s also a great way to network, build a deeper understanding of the ethanol industry, and make the most of the week at the FEW. Here are some unforgettable extracurricular FEW moments of the past decade.

Mike Bryan, BBI International chairman and co-founder, gives his annual opening statement at the 2006 FEW in Milwaukee, Wis. Now living in Australia, Bryan will once again return to the FEW in Indianapolis, Ind., this June.  

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In 2003, technology providers faced off against producers in a  mock game show. On the technology team was (left to right) consultant Greg Heuer, Gunter Brodl of Vogelbusch, Dave Vander Griend of ICM, and Bib Swain of the former Delta-T Corp.

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BBI Internationalâ€™s Mike Bryan hosts a 2003 FEW game show. On the â€œProducer Teamâ€� were (left to right) Russ Abarr of New Energy Corp., Danny Allison of Abengoa Bioenergy Corp., Ray Defenbaugh of Big River Resources and Gregg Hayes of Cargill.

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At the 2003 FEW, ICMâ€™s Dave Vander Griend and Poetâ€™s Jeff Broin went head-to-head in a decidedly leisurely mini-motorcycle race at the J&L Harley Davidson dealership in Sioux Falls, S.D. About 1,200 people attended that year.

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In 2005, BBI Internationalâ€™s Mike Bryan presented Patrick Foody Sr., the founder of Iogen Corp., with the Distinguished Service award. Foody developed processes that would make cellulosic material highly digestible to enzymes.

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The FEW expo floor was abuzz with activity in 2005 with nearly 2,700 industry professionals coming to Kansas City, Mo., as ethanol plant construction activity was quickly mounting. 

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Ethanol plant tours, when available, are an important part of the FEW experience. Going back to the mid-â€™90s, FEW attendees have been offered tours of U.S. ethanol facilities. Here, East Kansas Agri-Energy hosts in 2005.

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Those who were at the special event at the 2005 FEW will remember a lot of denim and cowboy hats at the Benjamin Ranch in Kansas City, Mo., where a few daring FEW attendees tried their hand at riding a mechanical bull. 

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Working together, Fagen Inc. CEO Ron Fagen and Wayne Newton of Australiaâ€™s NPH Farming Syndicate cut the expo ribbon at the 2006 FEW in Milwaukee, Wis.

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David Kelsall (1945-2008) of Lallemand Biofuels & Distilled Spirits was awarded the FEWâ€™s High Octane Award in 2007. The award presenter, BBI International co-founder Kathy Bryan (1945-2009), received the same award in 2009. 

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Fagen Inc. has sponsored many of the FEWâ€™s expo grand openings over the years. Here, CEO Ron Fagen and Bamidele Ololade of Nigeria cut the expo ribbon in St. Louis, signaling the opening of the 2007 event. 

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By 2008, FEW participants began to see increasingly large and often interactive expo displays as industry service and technology providers ramped up their trade show presence. Poet was one of several companies with an eye-catching exhibit.

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Raphael Katzen, the late founder of Katzen Engineering, was famous for his challenging speaker enquiries at the FEW. Here, he is pictured at the 2008 FEW in Nashville, Tenn.  

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In 2010, Poet Chairman (then CEO) Jeff Broin received the FEWâ€™s High Octane Award. Broin has now worked in the industry for 28 years and has grown Poet into one of the largest ethanol production companies in the world. 

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Over the years, many FEW general sessions have featured researchers, economists and academics who help attendees understand industry issues more broadly. Iowa State University professor Charles Hurburgh speaks at the 2010 FEW. 

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Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen has keynoted the FEW more than anyone else. His summer legislative updates always draw a crowd. Here, Dinneen speaks to the industry at the 2011 FEW in Indianapolis.   

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The 2011 FEW general session had a memorable NASCAR theme. Here, Growth Energyâ€™s Tom Buis interviews NASCAR Brian France. The keynote conversation was followed by a panel that included other NASCAR executives.

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FEW presenters speak to audiences that are well-trained and highly knowledgeable. Speakers understand that producers turn to the FEW for operational and management guidance that helps them operate their facilities more efficiently.

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Nearly a fourth of all FEW speakers hold doctorates. Here, Dr. Yanhong Zhang of the National-Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center to 2011 FEW attendees about distillers grains mycotoxins.

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DuPont made a bold statement at the 2012 FEW with a large, vibrantly colored expo display. More than 350 exhibitors were on hand for the show in Minneapolis, Minn. 	

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Enogen, a Syngenta company, sponsored the FEWâ€™s expo grand opening in 2012. Here, Enogenâ€™s David Witherspoon cuts the expo ribbon as BBI Internationalâ€™s Tom Bryan (left) and Joe Bryan (right) assist.       

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ICMâ€™s Dan Schwartzkopf (right) took home the 2013 High Octane Award. Schwartzkopf began promoting ethanol as a racing fuel in the early â€™90s and eventually worked on ethanol implementation with the Indy Racing League and others. 

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The FEWâ€™s breakout sessions often take on ambitious, even provocative topics. Philip Madson, president of Katzen International, is a perennially stimulating FEW speaker. 

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U.S. Water brought its FEW expo display to a new elevation last year, deploying a lofty, interactive kiosk below a revolving circular sign. In addition to exhibiting, U.S. Water also sponsored and presented at the 2013 FEW.     

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Seeing the Budweiser Clydesdales may have been the highlight of the 2013 FEW special event at Anheuser-Buschâ€™s brewery, but connoisseurs of process were probably more impressed with the facilityâ€™s brew kettles and beechwood aging cellars.

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Ethanol industry veteran David Kolsrud of DAK Renewable Energy received the FEWâ€™s High Octane Award in 2008 for spearheading the development of several ethanol plants over the course of his career. 

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Over the past decade, the FEW has hosted many preworkshop seminars, some attracting hundreds of participants. More than 300 people attended this 2007 seminar. 

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Today, the FEW breakout sessions are divided into four tracks. The most popular panels, individually, attract 300-plus attendees, eclipsing the entire attendance of early FEWs. 

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The â€œBrickyard Bashâ€� at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum was a popular attraction for 2011 FEW attendees. Located on the grounds of the famed Indianapolis 500, participants got a taste of the racewayâ€™s history.  

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In 2008, Mick Henderson of Commonwealth Agri-Energy (left) was on stage with the RFAâ€™s Robert White (then with EPIC), along with Ralph Groschen (now retired) of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Ron Graves of Oakridge National Laboratory.

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Martin Andreas of ADM takes the stage at the 2005 FEW in Kansas City, Mo., to praise the biofuels industry for its success. Listening are RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen (right) and Joe Jobe, CEO of the National Biodiesel Board. 

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In 2010, leaders of Growth Energy cut the ribbon. Left to right are Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis; Greg Krissek, ICM; Steve McNinch, Western Plains Energy; Jeff Broin, Poet; Dave Vander Greind, ICM; Bernie Punt, Noble Mansfield (formerly Siouxland.) 

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The breakout sessions at the FEW are particularly well known for allowing audience interaction. Time is allotted at the conclusion of each panel for a question-and-answer period. Here, longtime FEW attendee Jim Hettenhaus speaks. 

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After spending more than 30 years working in ethanol, industry consultant Larry Johnson was awarded the High Octane Award in 2012. Johnson developed a name for himself as the â€œEthanol Answer Manâ€� in the â€™80s.

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Today, the FEW draws attendees from 30 countries. Here, Dehua Liu of Bejing, Chinaâ€™s Tshinghua University, shares his perspectives on ethanol at the 2005 FEW in Kansas City, Mo.     

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ICM Inc. CEO Dave Vander Griend, won the FEWâ€™s Distinguished Service award in 2003.

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Last year, the heads of the U.S. ethanol industry associations sat down together on stage. Joining BBI Internationalâ€™s Tom Bryan, were (left to right), Growth Energyâ€™s Tom Buis, ACEâ€™s Brian Jennings and the RFAâ€™s Bob Dinneen.

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The International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo will celebrate its 30th anniversary in June. With plant personnel making up more than a fourth of its 2,000 attendees, the world's longest-running ethanol event is still â€œWhere Producers Meet." 

Three Decades Strong

Spinning corn oil from syrup has become the norm in the ethanol industry. Not long after the first mechanical extraction technologies were introduced just five to seven years ago, ethanol producers were asking chemical suppliers if there was something that would boost extraction rates&mdash;if nothing else, to get the yields up to meet the necessary return on investment. The results were impressive, with some producers tripling their corn oil yields from pure mechanical means with the use of chemical additives. As a result, robust competition among the providers of additives has emerged in the ethanol industry and in the short time since the first additives were introduced, much has been learned.
&ldquo;When you think about where ethanol plants are today and where they were 20 years ago, they continue to find new technologies to achieve better ethanol yield,&rdquo; says Jason Van&rsquo;t Hul, senior industry technical consultant with Nalco. He points to the advancements made in enzymes that boosted ethanol yields as one example. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re kind of in the 1980s days of corn oil extraction,&rdquo; he says. Nalco provides chemistry and services to help producers optimize their systems. There is a high percentage of plants pairing mechanical oil separation technologies with chemical extraction aids, says McCord Pankonen, applications and product development manager at Ashland Inc. The company has developed oil extraction aids for the ethanol industry since 2008, he says. &ldquo;A producer came to us and said, &lsquo;We aren&rsquo;t getting the oil we&rsquo;re supposed to, do you have a chemistry that can help?&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; The company now has five products available to meet varying situations, plus kosher options for feed bound for kosher-certified animals. &ldquo;Plants were getting 0.3, 0.4 or even 0.5 pounds of oil per bushel of corn processed with pure mechanical means,&rdquo; says Todd Emslander, director of sales in the ethanol process technology group at U.S. Water Services. &ldquo;They were doing pretty well, but looking to increase those yields.&rdquo; He points out that a 100 MMgy ethanol plant processing 125,000 bushels per day would realize more than $1 million per year if it could increase corn oil yields by just 0.1 pound per bushel of corn. &ldquo;That gave rise to a lot of companies getting into the market to provide surfactant-based chemistries to enhance those yields.&rdquo; Site-Specific Complexity The different service providers have learned, through experience, that it isn&rsquo;t as simple as just throwing a surfactant into the syrup stream. The best place to add the chemistry differs widely, and is virtually plant specific, plus getting consistent results has been a challenge for all. &ldquo;Each plant can differ in many ways, depending on design, engineering and operations,&rdquo; Pankonen explains. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s different operational philosophies. For instance, it is important to profile evaporator operations to determine where to best draw from to extract oil, which has an astounding effect on the efficacy of a corn oil chemistry.&rdquo; &ldquo;There are dozens of variables that impact oil recovery,&rdquo; agrees Emslander. &ldquo;There are a few factors that affect recovery more than others. But when you have each plant running different recipes and in different geographical areas&mdash;plants running different separation technologies and different plants having different designs, it gets convoluted really fast. You have to identify those factors for each plant.&rdquo; In addition, what works in one plant doesn&rsquo;t necessarily work in another, he says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve seen plants where high process pH has worked significantly better than low pH and vice versa. It&rsquo;s really dynamic. There are some generalities, but every plant is different.&rdquo; Every crop is different as well. Experience is showing that recoverable oil differs from year to year, and even within a crop year. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t see it in 2012, but in 2011 and 2013, we saw early in the season that it was a little bit of a struggle to capture the corn oil. But as the crop was allowed to age, things got better,&rdquo; Van&rsquo;t Hul says. The differences in corn from year to year are outside an ethanol producer&rsquo;s control. For those factors that can be controlled, however, the service providers are finding the interrelationships among parameters are complex and all report the learning curve has been steep. Grind size can have an impact as well as the enzyme package used on the front end. The solids loading in the front end has a big impact, as do pH and temperature. Finding the best location to introduce the chemistry for adequate mixing and consistent results is important, and differs from plant to plant. The length of piping between pumps and tanks can have an effect, for example. All of those nuances impacting the efficacy of the chemistry are in addition to probably the biggest one&mdash;the design of the centrifuge technology itself.&nbsp; As a result, dosages of additives can vary widely, says Van&rsquo;t Hul, explaining that which evaporator the syrup stream is taken from to run through the oil extraction process has a big impact. &ldquo;A service company can help you understand that. Sometimes it&rsquo;s counterintuitive,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;One thing I&rsquo;ve learned is you don&rsquo;t go in with preconceived notions. We tell our customers, we&rsquo;re going to try it in different locations.&rdquo; The return on additive investment can vary widely as well, he says. &ldquo;If they had a very inefficient system before we started, we can really impact operations and get $10 more oil for $1 additive. In really efficient systems where you just need a little extra help to get that extra oil, you may have to spend $1 to get $2 back. But at the end of the day, there is a return.&rdquo; Besides improving extraction rate, chemical aids have other benefits. &ldquo;Less mechanical energy is needed to separate the oil,&rdquo; Pankonen says, plus the oil is much cleaner. &ldquo;The solids level depends upon the marketer and the final use,&rdquo; he says, explaining typical specifications can range from 5 to 15 percent allowable solids. Most corn oil is destined for either the animal feed or biodiesel markets. Another big factor that impacts oil extraction aids is the overall plant design. Greg Smith, sales director of industrial chemicals for Croda Inc., explains that Croda&rsquo;s demulsifier/emulsifier works best in plants that have a stillage syrups storage tank before centrifugation, although it also performs well in continuous feed systems. As a commodity chemical company, Croda has a slightly different role in the oil recovery enhancement field, he adds, being less involved in providing services. &ldquo;Ethanol plants are welcome to purchase our product and manage their own hook ups and feed rates. We also supply surfactant to service providers who use it in their chemistry blends.&rdquo; Smith explains Croda&rsquo;s research indicates time, temperature and pH are the primary parameters to consider in fine-tuning oil extraction. The chemistry works best at 180 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and temperature can be a tool to adjust extraction rates. &ldquo;You find the right feed rate, then as much residence time as you want, then you get it hotter. The last thing you do is drop the pH below 4,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;Some [syrup] is coming off at 4.8 or 5, so if you can trickle in sulfuric acid and it&rsquo;s cost effective, people do it.&rdquo; The amount of oil ultimately extracted depends on getting the multiple factors in a particular plant right. As the industry learns more about how to get consistent results and tweaks the chemistry blends to meet varying situations, ethanol producers are increasing extraction rates, achieving around 1 pound per bushel of corn in some systems. Producers are also getting better at fine-tuning extraction to leave just the amount of oil needed for the end distillers grains market, and no more.&nbsp; Enzymatic Approach This past year, several ethanol plants have been examining a newly introduced enzymatic approach developed by Novozymes to enhance corn oil yields even further. The company introduced a new enzyme trademarked Olexa at the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop last year, says Jack Rogers, biofuel global marketing manager for Novozymes. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re seeing great results&mdash;an average of 15 percent increased corn oil and 2 percent increased ethanol yield. There&rsquo;s an energy reduction of around 3 percent, depending on the plant, and we&rsquo;re seeing a significant urea reduction.&rdquo; The enzyme works by breaking down the protein outer layer of oleosomes, which bind oil within the corn kernel. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re releasing a pool of oil that chemicals aren&rsquo;t able to access,&rdquo; Rogers says.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is a novel way to improve oil extraction.&rdquo; The enzyme is added directly into fermentation and no process or equipment changes are needed. In addition, a boost in ethanol production comes from another action of the enzyme in releasing amino nitrogen from the corn that is favored by yeast over other nitrogen sources such as urea. That has resulted in urea reductions as much as 70 percent, Rogers says. There&rsquo;s a lot of competition among the suppliers of corn oil extractions aids, admit those contacted for this story. That, in turn, has increased the number of trials conducted at plants as products are compared and new ideas for improvements examined. Getting a proper baseline for comparisons is important, as is collecting the right metrics and controlling all the variables but the one being tested. As a result, the ethanol industry as a whole is improving its sophistication in trialing new technologies. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re seeing a lot of innovation, mechanically, chemically and enzymatically, and you&rsquo;re going to continue to see that. It&rsquo;s good for the industry, and I don&rsquo;t see it slowing down any time soon,&rdquo; Pankonen says.&nbsp; &ldquo;What we&rsquo;ll continue to see is a lot of plants generating new ideas and asking vendors to look at ways they can implement them.&rdquo; Author: Susanne Retka Schill Senior Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine sretkaschill@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4922

FINE TUNING: As producers have turned to chemical additives to improve mechanical corn separation yields, suppliers have learned there are multiple factors to consider when optimizing systems.    

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SPINNING ENHANCEMENTS:  Centrifuges spinning oil out of syrup streams have swept across the ethanol industry. The mechanical separation process is being enhanced through chemistry and, most recently, enzymatic approaches.  

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CLEANER OIL:  In addition to improving yields, additives improve quality by reducing the solids remaining in the oil, seen at the bottom of the vial.     
 

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With corn oil extraction widely implemented, the ethanol industry turns to improving yields and efficiency.  

Optimizing for More Oil

The synergies between co-located ethanol and biodiesel production have been discussed for a decade. Existing infrastructure to share process essentials, in-house feedstock with distillers corn oil (DCO), and use of ethanol rather than methanol for biodiesel reactions are the more obvious benefits. Biodiesel technology providers want contracts in this highly sought-after market. For ethanol producers, the attraction is added value through biodiesel sales and D4 RIN generation. But it&rsquo;s also about diversification and fulfilling the renewable fuel standard&rsquo;s (RFS) vision. &ldquo;Over the past several years, biodiesel margins have been really strong,&rdquo; says Ray Baker, general manager for Adkins Energy LLC, a 50 MMgy ethanol refinery in Lena, Ill. Adkins Energy announced last fall that it has contracted with WB Services LLC to install a 2 MMgy biodiesel facility onsite with help from a $500,000 grant from USDA&rsquo;s Rural Energy for America Program. &ldquo;But one of the reasons I think we really like the project and the idea behind it,&rdquo; Baker says, &ldquo;is that we are already producing a conventional biofuel&mdash;corn-based ethanol&mdash;and we&rsquo;ll now be producing an advanced biofuel in biodiesel, and in the future we&rsquo;ll have the opportunity to be producing cellulosic ethanol. So we look at all aspects of the RFS, and the growth that&rsquo;s really built into that, and we see those opportunities.&rdquo; In recent years, DCO has emerged as one of the fastest-growing biodiesel feedstocks, and technologies to effectively convert DCO to biodiesel have improved. &ldquo;I think once they got to that point, that helped the technology evolve and the idea behind it become more economical to install into a plant,&rdquo; he says. Ron Beemiller, president and CEO of WB Services, says, &ldquo;From my perspective, the reason this idea of integrating was never fully realized is, nobody ever had a real clear understanding of both processes enough to do the integration properly.&rdquo; WB Services has more than 10 years experience in the ethanol sector. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been working on [the co-location concept] now for two or three years,&rdquo; he says. The company is installing both a traditional acid esterification/base transesterification system at Adkins, as well as an enzymatic process&mdash;a newer technology in the biodiesel space. &ldquo;Per batch, it can run either way,&rdquo; Beemiller says. &ldquo;We intend to run enzymatic.&rdquo; Novozymes is WB Services&rsquo; commercial partner in enzymatics. DCO traditionally runs between 10 and 15 percent free fatty acids (FFA), but Beemiller says he can offer performance guarantees far above that with enzymatic technology. Rather than using what would be Novozymes&rsquo; traditional approach, WB Services &ldquo;kind of took it from a different perspective,&rdquo; Beemiller says. &ldquo;We basically use the enzyme as a pretreatment step to lower the FFA or to convert all the way to biodiesel, and then we do a few other steps as well, whether that&rsquo;s an additional reaction along with additional polishing, and a few other things.&rdquo; WB Services has a patent pending on the integration aspects with co-location of biodiesel production at ethanol facilities. &ldquo;We try minimizing outside components that need to be brought in while maximizing use of existing infrastructure,&rdquo; Beemiller says. &ldquo;The combination of ethanol availability, coupled with the ability to blend recovered ethanol back into the plant instead of putting in all the capital equipment to collect and clean it, is one of the components that we worked on.&rdquo;&nbsp; In designing the plant, WB Services is using much of the same equipment, like valves and pumps, found in the ethanol plant. &ldquo;That way, they can utilize the spare parts from one to the other,&rdquo; he says. Baker says the option to distill biodiesel was necessary, and only added 5 to 6 percent of the entire plant cost. &ldquo;For our market here in Illinois, distillation is the preferred product,&rdquo; he says. Illinois is a very biodiesel-friendly state. Any biodiesel blended into on-road diesel above 10 percent is exempt from sales tax, making B11 common. Construction is underway but the harsh winter has delayed anticipated commissioning until second quarter.&nbsp; Patriot Project Less than two hours south from Lena is Annawan, Ill., where Jatrodiesel Inc.&rsquo;s first commercial supercritical biodiesel plant, a 5 MMgy facility, is being installed at the 120 MMgy Patriot Renewable Fuels LLC ethanol refinery. &ldquo;Jatrodiesel is a small company, but they have vast experience building smaller biodiesel plants that convert the harder-to-process feedstocks,&rdquo; says Rick Vondra, vice president and general manager of Patriot Renewable Fuels. &ldquo;For the scale and scope of what we wanted to do, it looked like a pretty good fit. DCO is not the easiest to convert.&rdquo; While Vondra says permits are not yet in hand, he expects to have them soon. &ldquo;We had an official groundbreaking although we haven&rsquo;t started construction yet,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Hopefully we&rsquo;ll get that completed in a few weeks, and start putting some steel in the ground.&rdquo; Vondra says the project is viable even without the now-lapsed $1-per-gallon biodiesel tax credit. &ldquo;We generally see a lot of business advantages when a biodiesel plant is vertically integrated into an existing feedstock-producing plant,&rdquo; says Raj Mosali, president of Jatrodiesel. In a traditional process, acid esterification is employed to convert FFA to biodiesel, and base transesterification using sodium methylate converts the triglycerides. &ldquo;In the Super process, we eliminated the use of catalyst&mdash;acid or base, or an enzyme&mdash;altogether,&rdquo; Mosali says. &ldquo;In a nutshell, we send a mixture of methanol and oil and out comes the biodiesel and glycerin. The advantages are savings in catalyst costs, process simplicity, true multifeedstock and up to 100 percent FFA capabilities, and high-quality glycerin.&rdquo; While the Super process requires more energy than traditional approaches, Mosali says under a normalized comparison between traditional and Super, between 12 and 18 percent savings overall are achieved, considering utilities, chemicals, operational expenses and more. &ldquo;If you consider soft costs such as training the operators, the savings are higher,&rdquo; he says. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity New Generation Biofuels Production Program is providing funding and development assistance for the ethanol plant&rsquo;s new subsidiary, Patriot Fuels Biodiesel LLC. Vondra says the estimated cost is more than $10 million. MarketFlex Another option available to ethanol producers is Cereal Process Technologies LLC&rsquo;s MarketFlex, a capital-intense system of dry fractionation that separates the corn upfront to get much more&mdash;and higher quality&mdash;oil along with a traditional biodiesel process. &ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s strictly a matter of how much money they want to make,&rdquo; says Pete Moss, president of CPT, on why ethanol producers might choose this route. &ldquo;A lot of the emphasis in the past has been on the value of ethanol, but now the focus is edging more toward oil.&rdquo; Moss says while many backend extraction technologies yield a half a pound of oil per bushel, dry fracking could yield 1.2 to 1.4 pounds oil per bushel plus an additional quarter pound on the back. More oil could simply mean more profit and better economies of scale, allowing higher biodiesel production volumes. He says the spread between edible corn oil and DCO has narrowed significantly. Today DCO is approximately 33 cents per pound with up to 15 percent FFA, while crude corn oil, which is not refined, bleached or deodorized, with less than 4 percent FFA sells for about 42 cents. Moss says he is working to develop a pathway with U.S. EPA so biodiesel from dry-fracked oil can generate valuable D4 RINs. For a 100 MMgy ethanol plant processing 36 million bushels a year, Moss says the estimated capital costs are $28 million for fractionation, $10 million for solvent extraction, and $15 million for a 10 MMgy biodiesel facility. A same-sized plant selling DCO averages $37 million earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), whereas a plant with fractionation plus solvent extraction and biodiesel production EBITDA would be $65 million. Author: Ron Kotrba Editor, Biodiesel Magazine 218-745-8347 rkotrba@bbiinternational.com

Jatrodieselâ€™s Super process employs ancillary equipment like the dryers shown here. The 120 MMgy Patriot Renewable Fuels ethanol plant in Annawan, Ill., is installing a 5 MMgy Jatrodiesel Super biodiesel production facility onsite.

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The concept of co-locating biodiesel production at ethanol plants is finally taking shape. 

Biodiesel: Coming Soon to an Ethanol Plant Near You

California&rsquo;s Low Carbon Fuel Standard allows an ethanol plant to submit a Method 2B petition to the California Air Resource Board requesting a lower carbon intensity (CI) number. Jan. 8, CARB issued guidance for ethanol producers seeking a lower CI number based on distillers grains dryness levels.
The new guidance makes clear that use of default drying energy values is no longer acceptable because it may overestimate CI reductions. Going forward, petitions must be based on plant-specific, operational information on drying or overall plant energy. The proliferation of advanced technologies for corn oil extraction systems (COES) and the increasing use of nonfood-grade (NFG) corn oil for biodiesel production contributed to the latest guidance. CARB also states it cannot prescribe a single approach because drying systems and processing parameters can vary widely from one plant to the next. Over the past two years, the use of NFG corn oil for biodiesel production has grown tremendously. Corn oil biodiesel is eligible for a D4 RIN (renewable identification number) under the renewable fuels standard and the LCFS has assigned it a CI value of 4 grams of CO2 equivalent per megajoule of biodiesel produced. Biodiesel made from NFG corn oil is eligible for the CI value of 4 because the energy required to dry the DDGS at the ethanol plant after the corn oil is extracted is considerably lower. This energy saving is credited to the corn oil and subsequently to the biodiesel made from it. The low CI value for NFG corn oil biodiesel assumes the DDGS is dried fully at the ethanol plant, for if the distillers grains were not dried, there would not be any energy savings to be allocated to the corn oil. Second, it assumes that the ethanol plant selling the corn oil is not submitting a Method 2 pathway and lowering the CI of its ethanol based on lower energy consumption, as this would be double counting. Third, it assumes that the actual energy savings from installing COES is 3,070 Btu per gallon of ethanol. Default Values A regulated party using the CI value of 4 for corn oil biodiesel must demonstrate that the net energy savings from the extraction of corn oil at the ethanol facility is greater than or equal to the value used in the California- adapted model for greenhouse gases, regulated emissions, and energy use in transportation (CA-GREET) calculation: 3,070 Btu per gallon of ethanol. If the net energy savings at the ethanol plant from corn oil production is less than this value, the biodiesel producer must use the Method 2A/2B pathway option of the LCFS.
In the CA-GREET default scenario for a dry mill corn ethanol plant, CARB assumes a default drying energy of 9,900 Btu per gallon of ethanol. This number is calculated from a 1998 study, which stated that the total energy consumption at an average dry mill plant is 36,000 Btu per gal of thermal energy, and 27.5 percent of that is used for drying DDGS. The assumptions that go into using the default value include: &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sensible heat effects are ignored. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The wet cake must contain approximately 65 percent water. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The syrup (solubles) must contain &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;approximately 65 percent water. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The dry DDGS must contain &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;approximately 10 percent water. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The drying process must be &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;approximately 91 percent efficient. In the latest guidance, CARB admits that the total thermal energy used by many ethanol plants has probably decreased since 1998. Dryer energy use is reduced at many plants in a variety of ways:&nbsp; improved dryer efficiency; drying DDGS to higher moisture content; reducing the water content of the wet cake or condensed distillers solubles (syrup); process improvements; centrifuge design alterations; etc. Calculating Energy Savings All of the above could cause actual energy use associated with drying DDGS to be lower than 9,900 Btu per gallon at a specific ethanol mill. If the actual energy use is less, then the savings resulting from installing COES might be lower. In order to accurately evaluate the savings, we must establish the difference in thermal and electrical energy consumption between periods when drying is occurring and when it is not. We must also have &ldquo;before COES&rdquo; and &ldquo;after COES&rdquo; scenarios for dryer energy usage with all other parameters being held constant. The scenarios must be of reasonable duration and sufficiently representative of both present and future normal operating conditions. CARB prefers plant-specific empirical data on the energy required to dry DDGS to average or specific levels. According to the latest guidance, the simplest and most straightforward operational data is validated and verifiable thermal and electrical energy consumption data from meters or from a plant&rsquo;s automated data-logging system. If that data can definitively establish the difference in thermal and electrical energy consumption between periods when drying is and is not occurring, no further plant information would be necessary. CARB anticipates that plant data logging will allow for a two-year analysis of all drying and energy use scenarios. A producer would then calculate the average drying energy for all drying modes including wet, dry and modified. Estimated Savings If such data is unavailable, the applicant must propose an approach to estimating dryer energy usage based on plant-specific information that is available. This gets tricky because there is no prescribed approach to do this. According to CARB, a dryness energy estimation approach must, at minimum, consider the following and include them in the life cycle analysis (LCA) report: &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Initial wet cake water content. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Final DDGS (or DG, if syrup is sold &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; separately) water content. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Initial thin stillage (solubles) water &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; content. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Final solubles (syrup) water content. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mass of corn oil extracted. &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Use of enhanced stillage dewatering &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; (enzymatic or other). &bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dryer efficiency. Applicants may also apply for a single CI for all distillers grains dryness levels, as long as it is based on two years of data and will be valid for foreseeable future plant operations. Applicants must demonstrate in their LCA reports that the mass and energy balances are approximately close and explain any discrepancy that prevents complete closure.&nbsp; Once drying energy has been determined, that value should be used to calculate DDGS dryness-based CIs. The calculations must be done on a dry-matter basis, and must properly account for extracted corn oil and syrup on a dry matter basis. Syrup and corn oil must be allocated proportionally (on a dry-matter basis) to all distillers grains dryness categories when CIs are calculated for the coproduct credit. Finally, when the CIs are certified, the plant must allocate ethanol gallons produced to the dryness categories after converting all distillers grains masses to a dry-matter basis.&nbsp; If there are three drying modes, the producer would take the drying energy into the CA-GREET model to generate three distinct CIs to be used to calculate LCFS credits.&nbsp; The LCFS is clear about placing the responsibility of compliance on regulated parties who use the credits. If plant operational data does not match the inputs in the CA-GREET model that is the basis of the CI value, then the credits generated as a result of combusting the final fuel can potentially be disputed. Most regulated parties who take the LCFS or RIN credit for corn oil biodiesel don't trace the origin of the corn oil when they purchase biodiesel. They probably should. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Author: James M. Ramm, PE Senior Engineer, EcoEngineers 515-344-9715 jramm@ecoengineers.us Contributing Author: Shashi Menon, managing partner, EcoEngineers

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Managing carbon intensity values under California's LCFS.

Corn Oil Removal Impacts Carbon Accounting

About 10 years ago, DDGS flowability became an issue as the industry began its exponential growth and ethanol plants began shipping coproducts.&nbsp; Flowability has been a major challenge for transportation and logistics, not just because it does not always flow out of rail cars, but it also hangs up in trucks, storage bins, and even in on-farm storage structures.&nbsp; Over the years, much effort has been expended into determining why flowability problems occur, and what can be done to eliminate, or at least reduce the occurrence.&nbsp; Considerable progress has been made, and flowability problems have declined throughout the industry.&nbsp; But, it seems that every summer the problem returns as temperatures and humidities increase. So what have we learned?&nbsp; Flowability (or lack of flow) is a complex phenomenon.&nbsp; The most important factors are moisture content and syrup addition level (which the plant can control), and ambient temperature and relative humidity (which it cannot).&nbsp; Other variables play a role, including dryer temperature and time, cooling temperature and time, cure time in flat storage, state of the residual sugars, fats and proteins after both fermentation and drying, the influence of yeast cell components, and fermentation products (such as glycerol, organic acids, acetic acid and lactic acid).&nbsp; Also important are corn grind size (and thus DDGS particle size), as well as vibration and compaction during transport. What about the reduced-oil distillers products that are now available?&nbsp; It would stand to reason that by reducing fat content DDGS flowability should improve.&nbsp; Unfortunately, this is not the case.&nbsp; Experiments in our laboratory indicate some flow parameters do improve slightly, while others do not.&nbsp; Similar to traditional DDGS, the most important factors are particle size, syrup level, temperature and humidity.
What can plants do to reduce flowability problems this summer?&nbsp; First, and most importantly, minimize the variability in your DDGS.&nbsp; The more consistent your production process, and more consistent your DDGS, the lower the probability of flow issues.&nbsp; Second, don&rsquo;t load railcars when the DDGS is still hot. The best practice is to allow the DDGS to cure/cool in flat storage until residual heat dissipates or, if stored in silos, to turn the material to break the bridges that may form between particles.&nbsp; Third, if a batch of DDGS is likely be out of spec, the best choice is to send that to a well-equipped unloading&nbsp; facility, if that is an option. Even if your DDGS is in spec, it may still have issues. My research team has determined that the easiest way to predict flow problems is to conduct some simple tests, including measuring angle of repose, loose bulk density and tapped (compacted) bulk density.&nbsp; The ratio of tapped-to-loose bulk densities is known as the Hausner ratio. By plotting Hausner ratio vs. angle of repose, we can estimate DDGS flow out of hopper bottoms&nbsp; and estimate regions of good and poor flow.&nbsp; Production of ethanol is a biological process.&nbsp; Biomolecules such as proteins and fats will always be present, as will products of fermentation, including glycerol and organic acids.&nbsp; These all make DDGS a sticky product, especially in the summer when these molecules can melt and flow between particles.&nbsp; Now is the time to start thinking about flowability issues and taking steps to reduce their impact. If you have any questions or need any assistance with your DDGS, please feel free to contact us.&nbsp; We look forward to working with you. Author: Kurt A. Rosentrater Executive Director, Distillers Grains Technology Council 515-294-4019 karosent@iastate.edu

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TAPPED VS LOOSE:    Hausner Ratio and Angle of Repose can be used to estimate DDGS good vs. poor flow.   

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Distillers grains flowablity is a complex problem, affected by factors an ethanol plant can control and some it cannot. Kurt Rosentrater writes that the most important step to improve flowablity is to minimize variability. 

Prepare for Upcoming Flowability Challenges

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is hard at work beefing up enforcement and making changes to its regulations and enforcement programs, both transparent and not so transparent. Several are worth ethanol producers&rsquo; attention. For years, OSHA has been promising to streamline of its Process Safety Management Standard to reduce the burden on employers. Unfortunately, no progress has been made or forecast. In the meantime, OSHA continues to apply its PSM National Enforcement Program, which increases the likelihood that PSM-covered chemical facilities, including ethanol plants, will be inspected. Both programs are designed to protect employees from hazardous releases of dangerous chemicals, including ethanol and certain byproducts of the ethanol production process. PSM inspections are time intensive and can result in significant citations and proposed penalties. The proposed penalties in the BP Petroleum cases were in the millions of dollars. Grain handling facilities of all kinds fall within the reach of OSHA&rsquo;s Grain Handling Local Emphasis Program in OSHA&rsquo;s Region 5, which includes Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Although grain engulfment hazards are the primary target of such an inspection under the LEP, the inspections also focus on machine entrapment hazards, amputation hazards, fall hazards, auger entanglement and even combustible dust.&nbsp; Grain inspections often result in significant proposed penalties for violations of OSHA&rsquo;s Grain Standard, which incorporates Confined Spaces Standard requirements, OSHA&rsquo;s Walking-Working Surfaces Standard, its Machine Guarding Standard and, in the case of alleged combustible dust, either OSHA&rsquo;s Housekeeping Standard or the OSHAct&rsquo;s General Duty Clause.&nbsp; A fatality or serious injury resulted from any such violation can result in very steep proposed penalties. A sister NEP to OSHA&rsquo;s Grain Handling LEP is OSHA&rsquo;s Combustible Dust NEP.&nbsp; One of the dusts listed in the &ldquo;purpose&rdquo; clause of the NEP is &ldquo;organic dusts such as &hellip; flour &hellip;,&rdquo; and one of the &ldquo;industries that handle combustible dusts&rdquo; listed in the NEP is agriculture, including ethanol production. Combustible dust has been, and continues to be, a focus of OSHA both with and without a specific standard. The accumulation of such dusts, in OSHA&rsquo;s view, can result in fire or explosion. Some of the most visible and highest-proposed penalty OSHA cases in the past 10 years have been combustible dust cases. In November, OSHA published a notice of its intention to create a new injury and illness reporting regulation. It would require employers of 250 or more employees to submit detailed data on all worker injuries and illnesses quarterly, and would require employers of 20 to 249 employees to submit reports annually. The data would include not just information from a covered employer&rsquo;s logs, but also employee numbers, geographic location, hours worked, and other arguably-confidential (to employer and employee) and proprietary information. OSHA would publish the data on its website for public access. The rule raises serious problems of confidentiality, accuracy and use or misuse by both innocent and not-so-innocent parties. As of now, it would not allow for the correction of any submitted data. The apparent goal of the rule is to shame employers by the publication of raw data that very often will be inaccurate and incomplete. In another rulemaking effort, OSHA has proposed requiring employers to report any hospitalization of a single employee within eight hours. Presently, employers must report only hospitalizations of three or more employees resulting from the same incident within eight hours. The new proposal also would require the reporting of any and all amputations within 24 hours.&nbsp; At present, only point of operation amputations on mechanical power presses need be reported. (In fact, any point of operation injury on a mechanical power press must be reported.) And the report must be made within 30 days after the injury&rsquo;s occurrence. All ethanol producers would be wise to go through their attorneys, for privilege, to retain the services of a consulting expert to evaluate, at a minimum, their PSM programs and practices, confined spaces programs and practices, lockout/tagout programs and practices, fall protection and housekeeping programs and practices. If programs or practices need to be reformed, the producers should modify them to protect against legal exposure in the event OSHA comes knocking. Producers also should keep an eye on developments at OSHA in the area of recordkeeping and reporting, as well as in substantive areas like combustible dust, in order to keep abreast of what OSHA is intending to require. Author: Eric Hobbs Attorney, Michael Best &amp; Friedrich LLP 414-225-4991 eehobbs@michaelbest.com

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Ethanol producers would be wise to pay attention to changes to OSHA regulations and enforcement programs. The best way to protect the business is to, through an attorney, hire a consulting expert to evaluate programs and practices, writes Eric Hobbs.

OSHA Alive and Well With Budget Increase 

When biogas project developers approach a new project, perhaps the biggest question on their agenda is, &ldquo;What will we do with the biogas?&rdquo; The answer&nbsp; isn&rsquo;t always obvious. A developer may produce power for sale to the grid, but there is increasing appeal in compressed natural gas (CNG) to offset fuel costs. In order to determine the best choice for a project, multitudes of market data and incentives should be navigated.
 Wisconsin-based BioCNG LLC is one developer armed with experience in converting both landfill and digester gas into CNG. To produce it, raw biogas is sent through BioCNG&rsquo;s patent-pending technology to remove hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic compounds, siloxanes and carbon dioxide. After leaving the BioCNG skid, the clean and concentrated biomethane can be used within a CNG dispensing system for onsite fueling. One of the company&rsquo;s projects, the Sacramento Biodigester, was commissioned last May and provides fuel to Atlas Disposal refuse trucks. The facility processes 25 to 100 tons of food waste per day to produce biogas, which BioCNG converts to 500 to 1,500 gasoline gallon equivalents (GGE) of CNG vehicle fuel. BioCNG&rsquo;s St. Landry Parish, La., facility uses 50 standard cubic feet of landfill gas each minute to produce 250 GGE per day for 15 sheriff and public works vehicles.
 When developers upgrade their biogas to CNG, they can make fuel to power their facility&rsquo;s vehicle fleet, either through engine conversion or purchasing new models. &ldquo;There are a lot of fleet managers currently converting their fleets to CNG,&rdquo; says Matt Davies, president of BioCNG.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is a much easier decision to turn their biogas into CNG if they already have CNG vehicles in the fleet. They are already familiar with the technology, and fleet managers are very pleased with the performance of the CNG vehicles so that ends up being an influencer to convert the biogas to CNG versus electricity generation.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;
 State and national initiatives have been driving interest in biogas conversion technology. Some states, such as California, provide grant funding to push the economic drive behind the biogas market. Renewable CNG is generally half the price of gas and diesel, and in some areas, costs less than other types of CNG available at a fueling station. As a fuel, renewable CNG qualifies for D5 advanced biofuel renewable identification numbers (RINs) and meets the Society of Automotive Engineers J1616 fuel specifications, Davies explains.&nbsp;
 As electric power purchase contracts expire, producers understand they will be paid less for their electricity from utilities, due to market factors or regulations. Vehicle fuel is a path to maximize the value of biogas resources. BioCNG receives inquiries from biogas sites, such as dairy operations, asking about the option to convert to CNG production, Davies says. Other larger agricultural sites might even have the option to use both the biogas to generate electricity and use the excess gas towards CNG production to become energy neutral.
 Building CNG Infrastructure
 As of March, Illinois-based ampCNG witnessed the one year anniversary of the grand opening of its Chicago to Orlando compressed natural gas corridor. At the northern tail of the corridor in Indiana, the Fair Oaks CNG station uses renewable fuel produced using the biogas from 11,000 cattle at the Fair Oaks dairy farm anaerobic digester. The biogas is put through a Totara biogas upgrading system made by Greenlane Biogas, where it takes the biogas from 55 to 60 percent methane concentration to a 98 to 99 percent methane concentration.&nbsp; The produced gas is then piped 2.5 miles to the CNG station to be used either in a CNG powered vehicle or inserted into the natural gas pipeline, explains Mark Maloney, director of business development at ampCNG.
 The price of electricity is one of the factors a digester project needs to weigh when deciding what to do with the biogas. Relatively inexpensive electricity prices could lead to smaller returns; whereas, if there is a lack of opportunities for CNG fuel, the producer might not be able to move it. &ldquo;The farm was lucky, that they have a large fleet there that can consume that fuel 24/7,&rdquo; Maloney says. &ldquo;They were in a unique position. Some digesters can clean it up to pipeline quality and sell it to a CNG station down the road or the next state over. It really just depends on the particulars around the project at the time.&rdquo;
 In the Fair Oaks farm case, the farm would have lost money combusting the gas into electricity since the price of power was so low, Maloney explains. &ldquo;For years prior to the project, they were just flaring the gas,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Then larger trucks with natural gas engines came to the market, it gave them the opportunity to look at cleaning the gas up to supply their own fleet with fuel.&rdquo;
 Another reason for biogas producers to opt for CNG production over electricity generation could be to harness the full value of the fuel. When combusting biogas to sell electricity to the grid, the producer takes a hit on efficiency, depending on the generator. &ldquo;With CNG, the producer is cleaning up the gas and getting paid for 100 percent of the energy,&rdquo; Maloney explains. In that instance, the consumer of that gas is at the whim of engine efficiency as the fuel converts into mechanical power, he adds.
 As of March, renewable identification numbers for CNG are currently worth more than renewable electricity certificates (RECs) in Indiana, Maloney says. The RECs are the attribute of 1 MWh of electricity production to meet renewable portfolio standards; whereas the renewable identification numbers (RINs)are equivalent to 1 ethanol gallon of fuel to meet the renewable fuel standard (RFS). &ldquo;In some cases the RINs are worth more, others the RECs are worth more.&rdquo;
 Biogas&rsquo; Role in Gateway to the West
 Just over 10 miles from Missouri&rsquo;s St. Louis Arch, Waste Management is constructing its third landfill gas-to-natural gas facility after breaking ground near the Milam Landfill in Fairmont City, Ill., last fall. The facility is projected to process roughly 3,500 standard cubic feet per minute of landfill gas and will inject the cleaned-up gas into Ameren Illinois&rsquo;s pipeline to fuel CNG powered truck fleets.
 Waste Management has roughly 27 years of experience using landfill gas to produce electricity. It is carefully trekking into the CNG industry, as well, providing landfill gas to eight or nine third-party facilities, which clean it to pipeline quality. &ldquo;We are new to the CNG business,&rdquo; says Paul Pabor, vice president of renewable energy for Waste Management. &ldquo;We are building our new one in Illinois, which will convert landfill gas to pipeline-quality natural gas. We will inject it in the pipeline and contractually use it in our CNG fueling stations to fuel our trucks.&rdquo;
 Electricity generation is popular among biogas project developers for multiple reasons. The power technology has more than 30 years of precedence, the fuel requires relatively little gas cleanup, and engine manufacturers are making engines that run on raw biogas, says Pabor. Most of the incentives available are geared more toward electricity generation, he adds.
 &ldquo;Many of the incentives for using landfill gas or biogas have been directed toward electricity generation, and that includes federal tax credits and state renewable portfolio standards that require utilities to have a certain percentage of renewable energy,&rdquo; Pabor explains. &ldquo;A lot of these incentives are directed that way, and, for a period of time, electricity prices were fairly high.&rdquo;
 Without the incentives, the cost of converting the raw biogas to pipeline-quality natural gas would nearly match the selling price of natural gas, which would make the cleanup technology unattractive to project developers and investors, explains Pabor. &ldquo;Now there are incentives for using renewable natural gas in your CNG vehicles. There&rsquo;s the RFS that requires refineries to buy these renewable fuel credits from people who are producing renewable fuel. So we now, really for the first time, have an incentive for using landfill gas or biomethane as vehicle fuel because you can add that renewable fuel credit to the revenue.&rdquo;
 The CNG market could possibly see both challenges and opportunities in the upcoming years, depending on legislation and market demand from the Northeast. Conversion from electricity generation to CNG might be driven by the renewable fuel credit standards, Pabor says. &ldquo;I think the expectation is, in some parts of the country, natural gas has seen some recent highs. I think the expectation for the next few years is not going to increase off its averages dramatically and so you do need the incentives for CNG. I think being able to predict what the renewable fuel credits will be within the next few years will draw someone into a CNG project.&rdquo;
 There are lots of opportunities with the organics diversion legislation coming out in states within the next five to 10 years, Davies adds. &ldquo;Many states are going to zero-organics in landfills, which has been ramping up digester demand and giving us a lot of opportunity with municipalities and others in the private sector.&rdquo; Author: Chris Hanson Staff Writer, Biomass Magazine <a href="mailto:chanson@bbiinternational.com">chanson@bbiinternational.com</a> 701-738-4970

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WASTE MANAGEMENT: A maintenance worker checks equipment at a landfill gas to electricity plant in Pennsylvania.
PHOTO: Waste Management Inc.


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Growing interest and new incentives have some biogas producers eyeing renewable compressed natural gas.

May 2014

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Business Brief

Columns

Reinvesting in Change

New Horizons

Lies, Repeated Often Enough, Become Fact

Serving Those Who Serve

Naturally Driven to Innovate

A Remarkable and Crucial Year

Prepare for Upcoming Flowability Challenges

OSHA Alive and Well With Budget Increase

Biomass's Most Dynamic Feedstock

BPA Addresses Inaccurate Report

Maintaining the Momentum

EPA Wood Stove Regulations: Opportunity or Death Knell?

RNG: The Next Renewable Vehicle Fuel

It's Not Over Until It's Over

Featured

Beyond Corn Oil Extraction

Ready Markets Soak Up Corn Oil

Three Decades Strong

Optimizing for More Oil

Biodiesel: Coming Soon to an Ethanol Plant Near You

All Things Biomass

Surveying the US Waste-to-Energy Fleet

Atypical Thermal Applications

Contributions

Corn Oil Removal Impacts Carbon Accounting

Departments

Power or Fuel: Making the Choice

From Fluff to Fuel

Enerkem's Family Affair

May 2014.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Business Brief

Columns

Reinvesting in Change

New Horizons

Lies, Repeated Often Enough, Become Fact

Serving Those Who Serve

Naturally Driven to Innovate

A Remarkable and Crucial Year

Prepare for Upcoming Flowability Challenges

OSHA Alive and Well With Budget Increase

Biomass's Most Dynamic Feedstock

BPA Addresses Inaccurate Report

Maintaining the Momentum

EPA Wood Stove Regulations: Opportunity or Death Knell?

RNG: The Next Renewable Vehicle Fuel

It's Not Over Until It's Over

Featured

Beyond Corn Oil Extraction

Ready Markets Soak Up Corn Oil

Three Decades Strong

Optimizing for More Oil

Biodiesel: Coming Soon to an Ethanol Plant Near You

All Things Biomass

Surveying the US Waste-to-Energy Fleet

Atypical Thermal Applications

Contributions

Corn Oil Removal Impacts Carbon Accounting

Departments

Power or Fuel: Making the Choice

From Fluff to Fuel

Enerkem's Family Affair

May 2014