Don’t think of a modern ethanol plant like the Johnstown facility as a mere producer of green energy from corn kernels. That’s only the first step.
Today’s ethanol plant is really the "potential hub, the starting note of a biorefinery capability," a place that might eventually process corn cobs and other field material to produce ethanol for uses even beyond the gas pump — including the burgeoning hand sanitizer market — according to Greenfield Ethanol Inc. CEO and president Bob Gallant.
At a demonstration plant the firm intends to set up this year in Chatham, Greenfield aims to develop a "bolt-on" technology that could allow its flagship Johnstown site — and other ethanol plants — to add corn cobs to their menu. Such an addition could boost ethanol output by 10 to 15 per cent at a typical facility, Gallant told an economic development conference here Jan. 15.
Also on the output side is waste carbon dioxide with the potential to serve neighbouring industries, an idea the Township of Edwardsburgh/Cardinal is attempting to pursue for the surrounding industrial park at Johnstown.
But the center of the envisioned hub is alcohol "one of the most tired old molecules in the world," quipped Gallant, a former chemical company executive and engineer prior to joining his current employer in July 2000.
Aside from slight differences in processing, "beverage alcohol, industrial alcohol, and fuel ethanol, are exactly the same product," he noted, while an image of alcohol-based food and hand sanitizer bottles flashed onto the overhead screen, declaring them a "very significant market for us right now because of H1N1."
Before Greenfield was Greenfield, it made only commercial and beverage alcohols, under the name Commercial Alcohols Inc. That diversified exposure in the alcohol business has helped the firm weather the fuel ethanol trade, "a fairly risky business over the last 10 years in North America," he acknowledged.
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