| BUFFALO LAKE, Minn. -- Adding sugar actually can increase
the ethanol output of a dry mill corn plant while still not displacing
corn, a factory-scale study shows.
Ethanol industry leaders are asking for permission to bid on stored
sugar.
Final results on tests over the past two months at Minnesota Energy of
Buffalo Lake, Minn., show that a 4 percent sugar blended into dry mill
fermentation tanks increases ethanol production and reduces fermentation
time needed to convert corn into ethanol.
The use of sugar for ethanol is especially important to the region's
sugar beet growers, who are expecting only break-even prices for sugar
beets this year, because of global sugar surpluses and low prices.
The study calculates that added income to the Minnesota Energy plant
would be more than $500,000 a year.
The American Coalition for Ethanol, based in Sioux Falls, S.D.,
released results from the tests Oct. 26. The ethanol advocacy group helped
promote the study. The Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers, based in Fargo,
N.D., donated the sugar.
Sugar producers, faced with surpluses and poor prices, have forfeited
sugar to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The agency has been looking for options for disposing of the sugar
without further disrupting sweetener markets, including whether the sugar
might be made into ethanol.
Making ethanol from sugar probably wouldn't be economically feasible
most years, because of the cost of making sugar.
Trevor Guthmiller, executive director for ACE, says the tests point to
a "win-win-win" for fixing the short-term sugar surplus
situation.
In the long term, it might lead to more co-location of a ethanol at a
sugar beet plant.
"It's good when different areas of agriculture can work together
and cooperate like this," Guthmiller says.
The tests were run at 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent and 5 percent
sugar. At levels above 5 percent, the process wasn't capturing all of the
sugar put into the process. The tests show that the plant effectively
could use 3,755 tons of sugar per year.
Speeding fermentation allows Minnesota Energy to process an additional
160,000 bushels of corn per year, to produce an additional 442,800 gallons
of ethanol, according to the study.
At current ethanol prices of about $1.29 back to the plant, the
facility could could increase its revenues by $500,000 a year, according
to Joe Johnson, general manager of Minnesota Energy. That would lead to
increased dividends for members.
"This plant is here to serve farmers, and if we can find ways to
use more agricultural products, and boost the return to our cooperative
members, we need to consider those options," Johnson says.
Merle Anderson, a director of the American Coalition for Ethanol from
Climax, Minn., is optimistic excited about the results.
"If it works to use sugar in ethanol plants in a way that does not
reduce corn grind, then we hope the federal government will allow some of
that sugar to be used for ethanol production," Anderson says.
There are 810,000 tons of sugar in USDA's Commodity Credit Corp.
storage around the nation, forfeited this year because prices fell to less
than commodity loan levels.
In a letter dated Oct. 12, ACE has asked Secretary of Agriculture Dan
Glickman to allow ethanol plants to bid on some of the sugar. The letter
was co-signed by several Midwest ethanol producers.
Results at Minnesota Energy may not be directly comparable to
allethanol plants.
"We don't want to portray this as how it would work at every plant.
That's how it turned out at this plant," Guthmiller says.
The Buffalo Lake plant makes 12 million gallons of ethanol per
year,compared with the total in Minnesota of 220 million gallons.
If all of the state's factories were able to use sugar at the same
level, the total used could use 69,000 tons, which would be about 8
percent of the nation's CCC sugar storage.
The amount of CCC sugar storage in North Dakota and Minnesota is about
148,000 tons, Guthmiller says. |