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By adding cellulosic production to the ethanol plant, POET will be able to produce 11% more ethanol from a bushel of corn and 27% more from an acre of corn.

Corn cobs: from trash to treasure

Given the fact that the Emmetsburg facility already contracts corn from local growers, contracting cellulosic feedstock from local growers is a natural progression. The farmers who will provide POET with the cobs will be responsible for harvesting the cobs and leaving them at the edges of their fields. POET or a third party will pick up and transport the cobs to the biorefinery.

On Nov. 6 POET hosted a field day to give Iowa corn growers a chance to look at equipment prototypes to harvest corn cobs. Manufacturing companies such as John Deere, Case IH, Demco, CLAAS, Vermeer, Wildcat and others attended the field day to present their cob harvesting prototypes to more than 750 people. Sturdevant said that future POET projects may process other cellulosic feedstocks, but for now their objective is to perfect their process with cobs and then integrate other existing facilities.

“Right now we’re focusing on this first approach and making it work profitably,” says Sturdevant. “Then we’d like to replicate this technology on other existing plants. This integration model makes so much sense because the facility has much of the infrastructure already there; you have the corn suppliers already bringing grain in, and they can bring in the cobs as well.”

Biofuels in the News

Department of Energy awards Novozymes $12.3 million

Novozymes was awarded a $12.3 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) to improve the enzymes necessary to produce cellulosic ethanol. Novozymes’ project DECREASE (Development of a Commercial-Ready Enzyme Application System for Ethanol) aims to improve the performance of their advanced enzyme system, to reduce the cost of cellulosic ethanol production.

Novozymes will match the DoE funding dollar for dollar, bringing the total investment of the research project to 25 million.

Project DECREASE is the largest research and development effort in Novozymes’ history with more than 100 employees allocated. Novozymes has already confirmed plans to launch the enzymes required for commercially viable production of ethanol from cellulose by 2010, midway through this contract, and now plans to reach an enzyme cost target that is even further reduced by 2012. This target is based on the use of corn stover as biomass feedstock.

In addition to the contract work, Novozymes is working to optimize the efficiency of enzymes on other pretreatments and second-generation feedstocks such as straws, sugarcane bagasse and wood. The company is currently supplying experimental enzymes to a wide range of development partners in the United States, China, Brazil and Europe. Novozymes is currently the world’s largest supplier of enzymes for the existing first-generation (corn) ethanol industry.