Patriot says thanks

Audie Sturtewagen explains the operations of the Patriot Renewable Fuels ethanol plant to a group of visitors Thursday. The Annawan plant began operations on Aug. 29, and visitors flocked to its grand opening, held Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. (BCR photo/Barb Kromphardt)

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ANNAWAN — Patriot Renewable Fuels opened its doors this week to let the public inside, as a thanks for all of the support the plant has received.

Visitors to the plant’s grand opening were treated to a bus tour for an up-close look at just what’s going on inside all of those buildings, just west of Mineral and the Bureau County line.

One of the tour guides was Audie Sturtewagen, an Annawan village trustee and an employee at the plant.

Groundbreaking for the plant was Oct. 27, 2006, and operations started Aug. 29 of this year. The plant is designed to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol from 37 million bushels of corn per year.

The first stop on the tour was at the scale, where all the trucks delivering corn also stop. Sturtewagen said that in addition to weighing the truck, sampling probes check the corn for moisture, and then take a sample that is checked for damage and quality.

Patriot will take corn with a moisture level of no more than 16 percent.

“We don’t want to gum up the hammer mills,” Sturtewagen explained.

Patriot has four hammer mills, which grind the corn to a small grind, about the size of flour particles. The ground corn is conveyed to the process area, where it is mixed with water, enzymes and yeast to begin the fermentation process. Each fermentation tank holds 800,000 gallons.

Sturtewagen said one of the most important parts of this part of the process is to keep the yeast “happy.”

“Happy yeast produces more alcohol,” he said.

The process results in a product that’s up to 14 percent alcohol, a level that’s higher than the industry average of 12.5 percent.

Temperature is another important factor, and the process uses heat exchangers to keep the temperature at 88 to 93 decrees.

The fermentation process results in a water/alcohol mix and the residue of the corn. The water/alcohol mix goes to the distiller’s tank, where it’s tumbled with ceramic beads, dimpled like golf balls, which remove the water from the mix, leaving what Sturtewagen called “100 percent moonshine.”

The other main byproduct from the ethanol process is distiller’s dried grains with solubles, which is used as an animal feed. The Patriot plant produces 900 to 1,000 tons of DDGs per day. The DDGs comes out with a moisture level of 50 to 60 percent. Some of the wet DDGs is available at the plant, but most of it is dried and shipped out.

In response to a question, Sturtewagen said the plant uses 800 gallons of water per minute, but most of the process water is recirculated. Most of the rest of the water escapes in the form of steam, which he said is eventually returned to earth in the form of rain.

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