Day 5 - Biofuels II (Ethanol) w/ Trip to an Ethanol Plant

Today was all about the biofuel we use most often in this country, ethanol.  Typically, the gasoline that we use in our car contains around 10% ethanol, and all that ethanol is made from corn and almost certainly was produced domestically.  A lot of the research being done at Cornell's School of Biological and Environmental Engineering is on the development of second and third generation biofuels, also known as cellulosic ethanol derived from grasses and woody shrubs (willow).

The day began with a lab to observe and hopefully quantify the effect of a specific enzyme on a species of switchgrass.  We began with three samples of switchgrass, each a product of a different preprocessing technique: chopped, milled, and pelletized.  Our hypothesis was, simplistically, the switchgrass which was prepared with the greatest surface area would enable the enzyme to work more effectively and thus more glucose would be produced.  We will observe the results tomorrow.

Today we toured the Biofuels Research Lab (BRL) at Cornell.  We were toured by Dr. Stephane Corgie, a native of France and a research associate in the lab with a patent for a unique magnetic enzyme recovery system.

Dr. Corgie explaining the layout of the Biological Research Lab (BRL)

The lab, while straight forward in it's motives and design, contains more fancy equipment with huge price tags than I was able to comprehend.  Basically, the lab aims to research the production of ethanol from grasses and willow.  While the process is simple and widely understood, challenges exist.  Namely, cellulosic fibers consist of three major parts: lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose, of which only the cellulose is usable.  Thus a major hurdle is how do you separate the three pieces so that you can get at the important cellulose feedstock.  The lab also has the ability to ferment glucose, derived from the enzymatic breakdown of the cellulose, in very controlled conditions.  They have fermenters that can do as little as a few liters all the way up to over a 100-L batch.

Small fermenters lined up in the BRL

Medium sized fermenter, computer controlled

100+ Liter fermenter

Later in the day we travelled to Western NY Energy's Ethanol plant in Medina, NY.  Here they receive 70+ truckloads of #2 Yellow Dent corn from local growers every day.  They process approximately 20 million bushels of corn into 55 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol, 160,000 tons of distillers grains that are sold to local dairies or feed lots for animal consumption, 1.5 million gallons of crude corn oil that is sold for processing into biodiesel, and lastly they take the 100,000 tons of CO2 produced by the fermentation and condense it for use in the beverage and food industries.

Ariel view of Western NY Energy's Ethanol Plant

A) Storage for almost a month's worth of corn for producing ethanol.

B) 4 Fermenters, 3 with capabilities of over 750,000 gallons and 1 that can handle 1 million gallons.

C) Final product tanks.  Ethanol that has finished the last stage of water removal needs to be denatured (rendered undrinkable due to beverage distillation laws) and is sold at 200 proof.