By Delayne Johnson
This month, our company, Quad County Corn Processors, will debut an innovative new technology that promises to make one of Iowa’s signature agricultural products — corn — go even further.
Over a four-year period, Quad County Corn Processors’ research and development team developed a patented process for converting corn kernel fiber into cellulosic ethanol. The new “bolt on” bio-refinery at our plant in Galva, Ia., is one of the first facilities in the United States to begin commercialized cellulosic ethanol production.
The new addition will produce two million gallons of cellulosic ethanol from the same kernel used to create conventional ethanol, corn oil and livestock feed. We will add four additional workers to the 36 already staffing our facility 24/7 and increase our ethanol yields — already 35 million gallons annually — by 6 percent.
Our yearly corn oil production, now 750,000 gallons, will multiply three times, and we will be able to offer livestock feed that is much higher in protein and lower in fiber than what we’ve been able to generate with previous technology.
The bottom line is that this breakthrough technology will create more value out of the more than 12 million bushels of corn that our cooperative’s 350 shareholder farmers bring to us each year and help Quad County Corn Processors remain a leader in America’s burgeoning ethanol industry.
That industry has grown by leaps and bounds in large part because Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard requiring motor vehicle fuel to include renewable elements such as ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard developed the infrastructure and industrial process to generate conventional ethanol, which gave us a base on which to build our new cellulosic ethanol technology.
For the owners of America’s tens of millions of cars and trucks, ethanol has numerous benefits, such as reducing exhaust emissions, stretching our oil supplies to make us less dependent on foreign petroleum and lowering the price of gasoline at the pump. Energy economist Philip Verleger concluded that the Renewable Fuel Standard saves U.S. consumers an average of $1 on each gallon of gasoline.
A typical U.S. ethanol plant supports nearly 3,000 jobs — not just at the production point itself, but also in transportation, equipment production and maintenance, and other sectors. All in all, the Renewable Fuel Standard supports nearly 400,000 jobs.
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