Corn Cobs, Not Just Kernels, Are On Ethanol Giant Poet's Shoppng List These Days
By John O'Dell September 28, 2009
While ethanol from the starch in corn kernels is a bad thing - less energy-efficient and with a bigger carbon footprint than gasoline - ethanol from the corncobs that usually are plowed back into the ground may provide a way for corn-for-fuel farmers, and corn-ethanol producers, to stand tall again.
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Corncobs, now jettisoned from the rear of corn harvesters, or combines, could become a major source of cellulosic ethanol and a new source of income for "fuel farmers," reducing need to increase acreage devoted to corn when only kernels are used for standard ethanol.
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Ethanol from the woody, non-food byproducts of food crops such as corn and sugar cane is called cellulosic ethanol - made from cellulose - and while its is more costly to produce than regular corn ethanol, the department of energy estimates that its carbon footprint is about 90 percent less.
That's got the nation's largest ethanol producer, Poet LLC, thinking corncobs rather than corn and is why the South Dakota-based company has just earmarked a $6.9-million Energy Department grant for the purchase of corncobs from farmers near a proposed Poet cellulosic plant near Emmetsburg, Iowa.
Privately owned Poet has applied for an additional $13.1-million grant for 2010 and plans to use at least some of the money to help Emmetsburg growers install corncob harvesting equipment to their combines - which ordinarily would strip the dried kernels and dump the cobs onto the field to be plowed under.
Poet is scheduled to open a $250-million cellulosic plant near Emmetsburg in late 20121 and says it will be capable of producing up to 25 million gallons of corncob ethanol annually.
The company has 26 refineries with the combined capacity for annual production of 1.5 billion gallons of corn ethanol - the bad stuff - so its nice to see an effort, not matter how small, to go commercial with cellolosic, the "good" ethanol (which still doens't pack as much enery as gasoline and thus requires more consumption for each mile traveled).
To finance the cellulosic plant - which it calls Project Liberty, symbolizing freedom from petroleum - Poet intends to use private money, borrowings and an $80-million grant from the Energy Department.
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