NOTEBOOK: Emmetsburg cellulosic plant making adjustments
PERRY BEEMAN Jul 18, 2016 | 3:45 pm
<1 min read time
0 wordsBusiness Record Insider, The Insider NotebookA spokesman for Poet Biorefining said the company’s cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg has been working through early adjustments, but he denied rumors that the facility was having difficulty producing ethanol from cornstalks and cobs.
Eric Ebenstein, Poet’s state affairs director, declined to say how much ethanol the plant is producing.
“We are working to get to capacity,” said Ebenstein. “We are pumping gallons.” The plant had hoped to produce 20 million gallons in its first year, a fraction of what a full-scale corn-based ethanol plant would produce.
Ebenstein stopped by for a chat while he was in town for the National Governors Association conference in Des Moines, and I asked him about the rumors of trouble at Emmetsburg.
Ebenstein said the plant has made adjustments to process as it learned more about turning cornstalks and cobs into ethanol, which requires some changes from the usual method involving breaking down corn kernels.
There have been scattered reports of trouble at the Emmetsburg plant, which opened to great fanfare in September 2014 in a ceremony that included King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands. The $250 million plant, expected to produce 20 million gallons a year, is a partnership with a Dutch biotech firm Royal DSM.
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