July 17, 2007

MARICOPA - About 10,000 gallons of ethanol was produced Monday night as the state's first commercial plant got on line, according to John Skelley, general manager of Pinal Energy LLC.

"The day has finally arrived," Skelley said in an interview with the Casa Grande Dispatch this morning. "We are working our way through some start-up glitches."

The first batch of corn was ground Friday.

The plant should be in full production next week, making about 150,000 gallons of ethanol per day while using about 50,000 bushels of corn. Most of the corn is brought by train from the Midwest but some is grown locally.

"There is not enough corn grown locally to satisfy our needs," Skelley said.

Ethanol is blended with gasoline to make it burn more cleanly. The ethanol will also be used to make E85, which is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. The ethanol products will be sold in Arizona, California and Nevada.

Arizona requires gasoline sold in winter to be 10 percent ethanol. California runs 5.7 percent ethanol year round.

Corn grown in Arizona is vulnerable to aflatoxin, which is poisonous to livestock. This is a problem because one of the byproducts of ethanol is distillers grain, a high-protein, high-fat, high-fiber animal feed that can be sold wet to nearby dairies and feedlots - or it can be dried, bagged and stored for future use.

Five years ago Arizona Grain and Eagle Milling Co. started looking for ways to increase grain use in Arizona. They saw that the ethanol industry was growing and began looking for partners to build an ethanol plant in Arizona.

Three years ago, they decided to build their own plant in Maricopa, where Arizona Grain already had a grain-handling facility. The new ethanol plant is designed to produce 50 million gallons of ethanol a year, and it can be expanded to produce 100 million gallons a year.

Pinal Energy's plant cost $65 million to complete and will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a crew of 40 people. Grain will be ground into flour, dampened, heated to 185 degrees Fahrenheit and left in a holding tank for two hours.

Then enzymes are added - proteins that speed the change from starch to sugar.

The batch is cooled to 90 degrees and moved to a fermentation tank, where more enzymes and brewer's yeast are added.

The batch is allowed to ferment for 48 hours, while the yeast eats the sugar and makes alcohol.

The resulting mixture is poured into a 1 million-gallon beer well and distilled to 190 proof alcohol (95 percent pure).

A molecular sieve removes the last bit of water and the resulting ethanol is 199 to 200 proof.

©Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. 2007