Piles of corn cobs on Darrin Ihnen’s family
farm would have been considered field waste not too long ago. Now they
represent potential energy. Poet,
a Sioux Falls-based company that has been making ethanol from corn for
more than 20 years, is working with Ihnen and several farm equipment
manufacturers to develop ways to harvest, store and transport cobs that
could one day join kernels as an alternative fuel source.


 

"Cobs
surround our facilities," said Jeff Broin, Poet’s president and chief
executive officer. "It’s a natural feedstock for us."

Poet plans to expand its plant in Emmetsburg,
Iowa, to produce 125 million gallons of ethanol per year — 25 percent
from corn cobs and fiber.

Farmers
typically leave cobs and stalks behind in the fields, but cobs — which
are the densest part of corn — can be removed without causing soil
erosion or stealing soil nutrients.

"To us, a cob is a waste product," Ihnen said. "It’s something that stays in the ground for two or three years and decays."

Buying cobs
 
It’s
too early to determine what Poet will pay farmers for their cobs, but
the company estimates it will be somewhere between $30 and $60 a ton.

Poet
will need about 275,000 acres of cobs to supply its expanded Emmetsburg
plant, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2011. The company is
harvesting 4,000 acres on Ihnen’s farm using several methods to gather
the cobs.

One
method uses a John Deere 9860 STS Combine modified to collect a mix of
kernels and cobs. The mix is then fed into a separator built by
Salem-based Feterl Manufacturing Corp., which sorts the kernels from
the cobs.

Randy
Bauer, Feterl’s president and chief executive officer, said the company
spent about five months developing the prototype and is now ready to go
into production design.

In
addition to ethanol production, there’s a huge cottage industry for
corn cobs, which are used as an organic abrasive on metal, plastic and
wood, Bauer said.

A
second method uses a standard combine hitched with a Cob Caddy, an
invention of Vernon Flamme of North Bend, Neb., which collects the cobs
as they exit with the stalks and husks.

The kernels stay in the combine, the husks are blown back into the field and the cobs fall into the caddy.

Federal funding
 
The
U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year awarded $385 million to six
companies hoping to build the nation’s first large biomass-to-fuel
plants. Poet, one of the six, is slated to receive up to $80 million in
grant money, which is part of the Bush administration’s goal of making
cellulosic ethanol competitive by 2012.

Poet
officials said the company’s cellulosic ethanol research should allow
it to squeeze 27 percent more fuel from each acre of the crop.

With
the September grand opening of its Portland, Ind., biorefinery, Poet
now has the capacity to produce more corn-based ethanol than any of its
competitors, including agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland Co.,
according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

Poet’s
21 plants can pump out 1.1 billion gallons of the alternative fuel, and
additional biorefineries under construction or development will
eventually add 375 million gallons of capacity.

ADM
has an annual capacity of 1.07 billion gallons with facilities under
construction or development that will add 550 million gallons annually,
according to the RFA.

Via MSNBC