April 1, 2008

Greater Ohio Ethanol, LLC.

At this annual farm and city day meeting, Dave Cahill, plant manager of the Lima Ethanol plant presented an overview of ethanol production.  The company has recently completed its first facility in Lima and plans its first production within a week or so.  Other sites being explored for additional plants include Old Fort, Findlay and Shelby Ohio.

Ethanol is essentially corn liquor and is made primarily from corn but other vegetation can be used such as sawgrass.  The corn is cooked in water to breakdown the starches into sugar.  Addition of yeast facilitates a breakdown of the sugar and alcohol, water and solids remain.  The solids are removed and are provided as feed for animals called DDGS.  Further distillation removes water and corn liquor remains which is actually drinkable.  In order to make the product unfit for human consumption, a 2 to 5 % mix of gasoline is added.  In Ohio, 85% of gasoline sold in E10 or 10% ethanol mix.

Currently 1 bushel of corn will produce 2.7 to 2.8 gallons of ethanol with hopes of increasing the yield to 3 gallons eventually.  He shared that it has been discovered that different cars run more efficiently on different mixes of ethanol and gasoline, typically between 20 and 40%.

Go-ethanol as the company is also called, plans to produce 450 to 500M gallons per year by 2011.  They have a 5 year agreement with BP as a primary customer and this isolates them from the fluctuations in corn prices that are currently seen in the markets.  Rail transport is key to the market and Ohio is well situated to serve the East coast market whereas much of the market to the West is served from Iowa.

For more information on Go-ethanol, follow this link.

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