Tharaldson Ethanol Plant makes its official debut

 

The ethanol plant uses the same amount of electricity as a town the size of Jamestown. The lights of the impressive facility can be seen from miles away in neighboring towns.

By Sarah Sorvaag

After months of planning, construction, and anticipation, the Tharaldson Ethanol Plant has officially opened and begun processing ethanol.

In May 2007, construction began on the nation’s fifth largest ethanol plant. The 19-month endeavor completed in December of 2008. According to Russ Newman, Vice President of Tharaldson Ethanol, most ethanol plants take over two years to build. The plant will likely host a grand opening ceremony in June.

“It’s kind of funny how we picked this site. We began by looking for where there was corn, then examined a railroad map to see intersections and highways, natural gas, and water resources,” Newman said.

A revolutionary objective was used in the efforts to have water conservation as a major priority in the ethanol process.

“We decided to take Fargo’s waste water. We will consume seven percent  waste water and receive 900,000 gallons per day of the 12 million gallons per day that is currently treated at the Fargo Treatment facility. We got creative on this and it is the only plant in the country that reuses waste water,” Newman said.

  “We installed a 12-inch tube and an eight-inch tube. We over-designed it in case we ever want to expand. We could double our capacity,” Newman said.

The newly finished ethanol plant is on the outskirts of Casselton and features a variety of high-tech gadgets and machinery, as well as a large storage capacity.

The Building Composition

The larger storage bins at the plant can hold 500,000 bushels of corn. Overall, there is enough storage space to facilitate 6.5 million bushels at the ethanol plant.  

The plant includes a maintenance facility, which houses an inventory of valves and other replacement parts.

The lab features microscopes and other scientific equipment in order to perform specific tests. Throughout each stage of production, samples are tested to check the cell counts, Ph level, and moisture content. A high pressure liquid chromatography is performed from the slurry to fermentation. Ion chromatography (IC) is a test used to determine whether the ethanol included as a blending agent in gasoline meets the sulfate and chloride concentration limits defined in the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Specification D 4806. Ethanol can be contaminated with chloride and sulfate, which can plug and corrode automobile engines. If sulfate and chloride concentrations exceed the limits, the ethanol may be rejected for use in automotive spark-ignition engine fuel. Other items examined in ethanol testing include composition by Gas Chromatography (GC), Denaturant, Methanol Acetone, and Isopropyl Alcohol to name a few that are in the final product. These properties are analyzed to determine any impurities in the fuel grade ethanol.

Next to the lab is the control room, which features computers and specialized technicians who monitor the corn-ethanol transition.

The rumble of machinery and the hum of pipes can be heard on the walk from the control room to the physical part of the plant. The distillers grain dryer that is used at the Tharaldson Ethanol Plant is the first of its kind in the ethanol industry. The fluidized steam dryer (made by a German company) has been used in the sugar beet industry for a number of years. The machine blows steam from the bottom up, making the corn float in the air like popcorn until the proper moisture content is reached.

“It’s a much more efficient way of drying and uses less energy. We recycle through the process and the dryer stands well over a hundred feet. We’re still working on the top part of it, but it should be fully operational in about two weeks,” Newman said.

The Process

The corn is first brought in by trucks and weighed in a building on the south side of the plant. The plant purchases the corn with a similar standard to a grain elevator with standard discounts, such as for light loads and it is then sample tested. The ethanol plant receives corn from local growers within a 50-mile radius. The Clifford Merchandising Group is the buyer for the ethanol plant. According to Newman, very little corn arrives by rail.

One bushel of corn can be used to create 2.8 gallons of ethanol. It will take approximately 120,000 bushels of corn daily to produce almost 400,000 gallons of ethanol. The Tharaldson Ethanol Plant will produce about 120 million gallons of ethanol each year.

“This year we took a few rail cars from the Kindred area. Unless there’s a drought, I don’t think we will bring as much by rail,” Newman said.

According to Newman, Cass County is going to produce 35-38 million bushels this year and we are going to use 40 million.

There are 50 employees who work at the plant, donning fluorescent green vests, safety goggles, and hard hats. It will be operational 24-hours-a-day and 350 days out of the year.

“You don’t want to stop, especially this time of year because things can freeze up,” Newman said.

“We won’t grind it unless the moisture is down to 14.5 or 15. There’s a lot of wet corn this year. We have a dryer so we have been taking some at 23 or 24 percent moisture this year. We will dry it here if we need to. We can dry 10,000 bushels an hour,” Newman said.

After the corn enters the building from the east side of the plant through conveyors, it’s fed into the hammer mills. The corn drops in there to be ground into a light yellow flour. The flour is mixed with water and briefly cooked. Enzymes are then added to convert the starch from the flour into sugar using a chemical reaction called hydrolysis.

It takes two gallons of water to process one gallon of alcohol. According to Newman, this is much more efficient in comparison to other ethanol plants, which use three to four gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. Also, 40 percent of the water used returns back to the city of Fargo. Tharaldson Ethanol is the only ethanol plant to reuse waste water, according to Newman.

“We use about half of what a normal ethanol plant uses,” Newman said.

When finished with the water process, whatever hasn’t turned into steam is filtered back through the same pipe system to Fargo.

Yeast is then added to ferment the sugars to ethanol. The next step is for the alcohol to build up in the beer wells. Then the product is moved into another tank that removes water. The ethanol is separated from the mixture by distillation and the water is removed from the mixture using dehydration. The smell near the fermentation process is similar to a brewery. The remaining sugar from the starch is fed to microbes that produce ethanol and carbon dioxide. Powerful sounds reverberate and steam sifts up the sides of the indoor bins during the process.

The completed product is then shipped on 96 tanker rail cars on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. Each one of the rail cars contains 29,000 to 30,000 gallons of alcohol.  That equals about three million gallons on a train. Most of the ethanol will be shipped and used on the west coast.

Green Plains Renewable Energy sells the ethanol.

“They’re an ethanol marketer. The minute it hops on the rail, they own it. They buy if from us and they sell it. We want to focus on refining and production,” Newman said.

The other product made out of the remnants of ethanol production is the wet distillers grain (DDG), which is the back end of the corn after it has been dried. It is sold as a separate entity by the ethanol plant. The starch has been removed during the process. The ethanol plant will have about 450,000 tons of these leftovers annually, which can be used as a high-protein feed for dairy, cattle, poultry, and swine and it will be shipped to the west coast and potentially Canada.

“The distillers product needs a moisture content of 11 or 12 percent. There’s a good market for it in the Orient,” Newman said.

The Benefits

Tharaldson Ethanol does not sell the ethanol. “We wanted to just focus on refining and production,” Newman said.

Newman believes that energy interdependence is one of the main pluses for ethanol. Two billion dollars a day goes to foreign countries to purchase oil. He also sees ethanol as a benefit to the Red River Valley. Farmers are ensured a place to sell their corn and, in turn, implement dealers see more sales.

“I can’t tell you how many farmers have stopped and thanked me,” Newman said.

The next step in promoting ethanol is to get blender pumps throughout North Dakota. A blender pump is a gas unit that offers four hoses. Each hose will hold either Ezero, which is straight gas, E10, which is 10 percent gas and most commonly used, E20, E30, or E40, which are mid-level blends, and E85 for hybrid vehicles. The E85 and E30 hoses would be colored yellow to help consumers distinguish the fuel needed for their vehicle. The goal is to have a couple hundred throughout the state so as to offer more options to consumers. The governor’s office has also been involved with the project.

“The whole idea is to use this product here in the Midwest as much as we can. The high demand now is in the population on the coastlines. We need to create more demand here. It costs $0.25 per gallon to ship the ethanol to Northern California and it costs $0.02 to get it to Fargo. It’s about giving the consumer more options if we get these pumps up,” Newman said.

The Future

Adaptations can be made to the ethanol plant when the science of cellulosic ethanol is no longer experimental and becomes fully functional.

“You have to be a good operator to stay open. We’re optimistic for the long haul. When it comes down to it, you want to be the last man standing. How do you do that? You have to use your water and get more gallons per bushel of corn,” Newman said.

By not only it’s size, but also it resourcefulness and consideration for conservation, the Tharaldson Ethanol Plant is a modern marvel. Newman feels that the production of alternative energy sources is vital to the United States and Red River Valley.

“I think it’s very important that our country becomes energy independent. Whether that’s through the use of ethanol or hydrogen, wind or solar, or whatever kind of energy we can find, we should utilize it. Right now, we’re importing about 72 percent of our oil from countries that aren’t that friendly towards us. Another benefit to ethanol is that it really helps the local agriculture economy,” Newman said.