Evolving Biofuels | Green Energy News |

October 29, 2006 – Vol.11 No.32

EVOLVING BIOFUELS.

Like the continuing evolution of hybrid technology, the technology and processes to produce ethanol continue to evolve.

E3 BioFuels is building a closed loop system for distilling commercial quantities of ethanol using methane gas recaptured from cow manure, instead of fossil fuels, as a source of energy for the distilling process. The closed loop system combines a 25-million-gallon per year ethanol refinery, a beef cattle feedlot and an anaerobic digester. In the loop wet distiller’s grain - a byproduct of ethanol distilling - is fed to cattle on site. Manure from the cattle is fed into the digester to generate methane gas fuel used in distilling.

According to the company, the process is twice as energy efficient as any other type of ethanol distilling. The high efficiency might eliminate the possibility that it takes more energy to make ethanol than it gives back as fuel.

E3 BioFuels will launch its first plant - the Genesis plant - in Mead, Nebraska in December. It is the first of 15 planned by the company for the next five years. Those plants will be near dairy farms or feedlots, they say.

VeraSun considers distiller’s grains - the leftovers from making distilling ethanol from grains a co-product, not a byproduct, of the ethanol making process. The company uses the term co-product since it plans to use it to make another fuel: biodiesel.

Oils will be squeezed from the distillers grain and what remains will become a low-fat livestock food.

Making use of the distiller’s grain for additional fuel might further dispel concerns about the amount of energy needed to make transportation fuels from biofeedstock.

The company is currently evaluating locations to build a 30-million gallon per year biodiesel facility, presumably utilizing distiller’s grain, at least in part, to make the fuel.

Visit E3 BioFuels at http://www.e3biofuels.com/ and VeraSun at http://www.verasun.com/