POET Biorefining – Preston has cut its water use by 13 percent thanks to a recently installed water recovery system.

The new system allows the plant to recycle an additional 19 million gallons of waste water per year from the filtering system at the plant, bringing its total water use per gallon of ethanol down to 2.6 gallons. POET plants on average use about 3 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol.

“Water is a precious natural resource and must be managed responsibly,” POET CEO Jeff Broin said. “Despite the fact that our water use has declined more than 80 percent since we started producing ethanol, POET is constantly looking for ways to use even less water in our production process. The Preston plant is the latest example of that.”