POET receives $80 million grant for cellulosic ethanol project

POET and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announce that they have signed a cooperative agreement for a commercial cellulosic ethanol project in Emmetsburg, Iowa. The agreement finalizes the first phase of a DOE award that was announced in February and will govern all aspects of the project leading up to construction. With the agreement in place, POET will move forward on project preliminary design and engineering, environmental engineering, biomass collection and other activities.

According to the cooperative agreement, phase one of the project will last approximately 20 months. A subsequent phase two agreement will then be negotiated to cover construction which is expected to take two years. Following construction, facility operation is expected to begin in 2011.

Along with five other companies, POET was selected in February by the DOE to negotiate a joint funding relationship to construct a commercial cellulosic ethanol production facility. POET's award is up to $80 million and can�t exceed 40 percent of the project's total cost.

Project Liberty, POET's cellulosic project, will convert an existing 50 million gallon per year (mgpy) dry-mill ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa into an integrated corn-to-ethanol and cellulose-to-ethanol biorefinery. Once complete, the facility will produce 125 million gallons per year and show the following efficiency increases:

• delivering 11 percent more ethanol from a bushel of corn
• reaping 27 percent more ethanol per acre of corn
• reducing natural gas consumption in the plant by 83 percent
• reducing water consumption by 24 percent

Twenty-five percent of the output will be from cellulosic corn fiber and corn cobs. Once the transformation is complete, the facility will also produce corn germ meal and corn oil, as well as 80,000 tons of Dakota Gold Corn Germ Dehydrated and 100,000 tons of Dakota Gold HP (a high protein distillers grain feed product) annually as animal feed co-products.

The bioconversion process to be used at the cellulosic ethanol plant draws on two technologies:
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1. 'BFRAC', an advanced corn fractionation process which separates the corn into three fractions including fiber, germ and endosperm. The endosperm is then fermented to create ethanol while the remaining fractions are converted into new value-added co-products, including POET's trademarked Dakota Gold HP, trademarked Dakota Bran cake, corn germ meal and corn oil. In addition to these high value co-products, the process also results in increased plant throughput and decreased energy consumption.
2. 'BPX', a patent-pending raw starch hydrolysis process which converts starch to sugar, which then ferments to ethanol without heat. The BPX process not only reduces energy costs, but also releases additional starch content for conversion to ethanol, increases protein content and quality of co-products, increases co-product flowability, potentially increases plant throughput and significantly decreases plant emissions.

In June, POET announced that Jim Sturdevant, a 22-year veteran of the US Geological Survey, will serve as director of the project and that they had successfully produced cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs. POET has purchased additional land adjacent to their Emmetsburg production facility in order to accommodate construction of the cellulosic facility.

POET, the largest dry mill ethanol producer in the United States, is an established player in the biorefining industry through project development, design and construction, research and development, plant management, and marketing. Formerly known as Broin, the 20-year old company currently operates 21 production facilities in the United States with six more in construction or in the midst of expansion. The company produces and markets more than 1.1 billion gallons of ethanol annually.