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Lincolnway's Ethanol Products:
Fuel Ethanol
Fuel ethanol is a commodity product sold in unbranded form to gasoline refiners
and producers who blend it with gasoline and sell it to the end consumer
as “ethanol enhanced gasoline” or as an “oxygenated fuel”.
Each gallon of fuel ethanol produced is indistinguishable from the next,
so product quality is determined simply by whether or not the ethanol meets
minimum commercial specifications. The primary specification is that ethanol
contains no more than 0.5% water by volume, which is an easy requirement
to meet with today’s dehydration technology.
The demand for ethanol stems from the fact that:
- It is an alternative fuel reducing dependence on foreign oil;
- It is an effective octane-enhancing agent. (Pure ethanol has an octane of about 115 vs. about 83 for unleaded gasoline.);
- MTBE is now being abandoned as an oxinated additive and ethanol is thus far the only replacement comparable in price and availability. It has the environment benefit of being an oxygenated fuel, which means that it burns with less tailpipe carbon emissions than straight gasoline. According to a 2003 study by Argonne National Laboratory, ethanol use reduced greenhouse gases by 5.7M Tons in 2003; and for all of these reasons
- The US government gives gasoline blenders a tax exemption for using ethanol, which puts more money in the blenders’ pockets.
Want to read about corn to ethanol energy balance? See USDA Energy Balance of Corn to Ethanol: An Update
Distillers Grains
Standard #2 grade corn, typical feedstock for fuel ethanol plants, is made
up of 60%-65% starch, 8% protein and a variety of other constituents within
the kernel. The corn is ground up, and the starch is separated out in a way
that enables it to be converted into ethanol in a multi-step process. The
remaining corn solids not converted into ethanol; called distiller’s
grains, have about 30-90% solids, but all of the original protein of the
corn entering the front of the plant. If dried, the distiller’s grains
are concentrated to approximately 30% by the time it exits the dryer at the
back of the plant. Watery material from other areas of the plant, which contains
corn dry matter, proteins, fiber, fats and oil, is evaporated into thick
syrup called condensed distillers solubles. The condensed distiller’s
solubles is blended with the distiller’s grains in the dryer to create
the final feed product; distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS).
Want to read more? See Iowa State University’s Distillers Grains Handbook.
Acrobat
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