The third Process Optimization Seminar, coming up September 1-2 in Kansas City, is sold out.

The interactive seminar focused on increasing ethanol plant process efficiency and profitability is sponsored Fremont Industries, Fermentis, Novozymes and Phibro Ethanol Performance Group. They have already held two successful workshops in Minneapolis last year and Indianapolis earlier this year and they will be announcing more in the near future.

I talked with Tom Slunecka (pictured far left) of Phibro at the recent American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) conference about the seminars and why they are so popular with ethanol plant operators and managers. “There just can’t be enough education, there’s always things changing and new technologies available,” Slunecka said. “We keep the class sizes very small so about 60 people are invited each time.” Each of the four companies present a hands-on demonstration based education, such as Phibro’s section on antibiotics where they use microscopes to learn how to identify different microbes that might be present in an ethanol plant.

The big reason why the workshops are so popular, Slunecka says, is because ethanol plant margins are razor thin. “So if you can squeeze out a percent, or even a half a percent more alcohol from your same inputs, it will dramatically change your plant,” he said. “We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of added revenue that a plant may be missing out on.”

Listen to my interview with Tom here: Tom Slunecka Interview