Construction of the first D3MAX facility at the Ace Ethanol facility in Stanley, Wisconsin has started, the companies announced this week. Ace Ethanol will be the first ethanol plant to integrate the patented D3MAX technology with its existing corn dry mill.
Earlier this year, Ace Ethanol received approval from its board of directors and members to proceed with the design and construction of the corn kernel fiber-to-ethanol plant and now they have started construction of the D3MAX facility.
“The team at D3MAX along with the Ace Ethanol team, is extremely excited to start building the first commercial-scale facility,” says, Mark Yancey, chief technology officer at D3MAX. The integrated facility will also employ membrane-based ethanol recovery technology supplied by Whitefox Technologies, resulting in significant energy savings for the integrated facility. Fagen Inc. is the contractor who was selected to build the new D3MAX facility.
According to Yancey, the D3MAX process is the only corn kernel fiber-to-ethanol process that will not require an independent engineer to validate the cellulosic ethanol production every 500,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol produced. With the D3MAX process, cellulosic ethanol gallons can be measured directly avoiding the cost of re-certification required by EPA for co-processing and in-situ corn kernel fiber processes. Currently, all other corn kernel fiber technologies require costly re-certification every 500,000 gallons.