Badger State Ethanol LLC (BSE) recently increased ethanol production to over 90 million gallons at its Monroe facility – more than doubling its original nameplate capacity of 40 million gallons when the plant began production in 2002.
BSE collaborated with Scott Lucas, Director of Engineering with Lucas E3 LLC (LE3), to expand the plant’s ethanol production. “Lucas E3 is looking forward to bringing low cost expansion opportunities to the industry,” Lucas said. “This project successfully demonstrates some of the technology being developed by our team.”
In the collaboration, BSE used LE3’s patent pending and efficient secondary distillation system. LE3’s secondary distillation system is innovative due to the heat integrations that reduce total energy usage by 2,000 Btu/gallon for the plant.
BSE has experienced over a 40 percent expansion to its distillation capacity, with seamless integration to the existing system. All plants are different, but LE3 expects these expansions to cost less than $1 per gallon.