First Midwest Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Is Producing Tank-Car Loads Of Fuel

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Poet Inc., the nation’s first commercial-scale producer of cellulosic ethanol, is shipping the fuel from its plant in Emmetsburg, IA, and could hit full production by the end of 2016, Founder and Chief Executive Jeff Broin said, adding that the plant, completed in 2014 with Dutch partner Royal DSM, has shipped tank-car loads of fuel in recent months, though he declined to give the quantity. The $275 million plant is the first of three large ethanol plants in the Midwest designed to used corn stalks and cobs, rather than corn kernels, to produce the fuel.

Broin said the biggest challenge of the new technology is handling the large quantity of cobs and stalks, known as corn stover, that are collected from farm fields, rolled into bales and fed into the ethanol plant. He said some equipment in the new plant is being replaced to make that process work better.

Broin said scaling up commercial production of cellulosic ethanol is "moving much faster than we did in the early days of starch [corn] ethanol." Cellulosic ethanol gets its name from cellulose, the fibrous material in plants. Sugars are extracted from cellulose with enzymes and then fermented into alcohol.

The plant in Emmetsburg, in north central Iowa, has a capacity of 25 million gallons per year, and is one of three Midwest cellulosic plants built in the past two years.

Broin said Poet’s goal is to build cellulosic ethanol plants next to each of its existing corn-ethanol plants. For that investment to happen, he said, the U.S. government needs to support the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal mandate to blend ethanol into the U.S. fuel supply.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the mandate, has set blending requirements below the aggressive growth envisioned in a 2007 federal law. Most gasoline sold at the pump is 10 percent ethanol. The ethanol industry wants federal blending levels that promote 15 percent and higher blends. The oil industry opposes the policy.  

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