Two biofuel interests are partnering to extract corn oil from the by-product of an ethanol plant in Wisconsin and turn that oil into biodiesel.
This story from Ethanol Producer Magazine says GreenShift Corp. (through its subsidiary GS CleanTech)is partnering with United Ethanol to extract 1.5 million gallons of corn oil a year from the distillers grains produced at the 42-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant in Milton, Wisconsin using GreenShift’s patent-pending Corn Oil Extraction Systems:
The technology reduces overall plant emissions and utility costs by up to $1 million each year for a 100 MMgy plant that dries all of its distillers grains.
“Corn ethanol producers recognize the need to use technology to enhance margins and defray risk,” said GreenShift Chairman Kevin Kreisler. “The best way to do this is to implement ’plug and play’ technologies that enhance the yields and operating efficiencies of the traditional ethanol production process. Our corn oil extraction technology is the first of several technologies that meets that goal.”
GS CleanTech Corp., a subsidiary of GreenShift, will build the corn oil extraction operations on the ethanol plant site, and United Ethanol will operate the facility, according to David Cramer, president and chief executive officer of United Ethanol, “This is the first stage of a long-term project that will get us into biodiesel production using corn oil from our facility,” he said in a company newsletter.
I will tell you that this kind of technology was part of the talk at the recent National Biodiesel Conference & Expo in Orlando, Fla. Seems to make sense to squeeze every bit of good out of that corn seed that you can… ethanol, biodiesel, livestock feed… to make sure bottom lines stay above the red line.