Ethanol’s Dynamic Duo -- Ethanol Producer Awards: Collaboration of the Year to ICM Inc. and The Andersons

by Tom Bryan (Ethanol Producer Magazine) A year after bringing their showcase plant online, the partnership between ICM Inc. and The Andersons remains poised to bear fruit. Element LLC features selective milling and fiber separation alongside a unique corn fiber-to-ethanol platform.

The state-of-the-art 70 MMgy facility, just a year running, is a vision made manifest by ICM Inc. CEO Dave VanderGriend, who says Element LLC will be the most efficient, lowest-cost ethanol plant in the world once its impressive suite of technology hums in unison.

VanderGriend isn’t alone in this vision. His company partnered with The Andersons Inc. on Element, and the companies own and operate the promising biorefinery jointly. The power collaboration, which turned heads in the biofuels space when it was announced a few years ago, was designed to leverage the specialties of each enterprise: ICM for its technology, The Andersons for its competencies in merchandising and logistics.

In terms of operational strategy, VanderGriend says, the idea is that the collective know-how of both companies will result in an ultra-high-yielding ethanol plant that brings to bear the technology and production intelligence ICM has amassed over two decades. “The purpose of Element is rooted in what we’ve learned over the past 10 to 20 years, and how we can apply that to demonstrate what a true next-generation ethanol plant looks like,” he says. “That’s what this is all about.”

The facility is almost a working showroom of proven and novel technologies developed by ICM, including its hopeful grain fiber-to-ethanol platform, Generation 1.5—which, VanderGriend says, has been “up and down” over the past several months in a sagacious commissioning. “I just keep telling everyone, ‘We’ll get there. We’ll get there. Be patient.’”

VanderGriend has always taken a measured, long view approach to technology development. Entering the ethanol industry in 1978, he says, his company didn’t actually design an ethanol plant, in whole, until 2001. “It took 23 years, working for High Plains Corp., remodeling plants and helping plants,” he says. “We took everything we learned prior to 2001 and incorporated it into that first ethanol plant. And you know what, that model was reproduced 115 times over the next 15 years. But what have we learned since? What should ethanol production look like now?”

In part, the answers to those questions are being dictated by the allure of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which favors biofuels made with less energy. “We wanted to minimize natural gas and electricity to whatever extent we could,” VanderGriend says. “So, we installed our Advanced Gasification Technology at Element (utilizing wood waste) with a let-down turbine, so we could make our own gas and our own electricity.”

VanderGriend says Colwich, Kansas, may not have seemed like an obvious location for a new ethanol plant. However, it is located on the edge of the western Corn Belt, relatively close to California, and has ready-access to both the BNSF and Union Pacific railways. Building Element there made sense for two other reasons: It was next door to ICM’s headquarters, and there was existing ethanol plant infrastructure on site, the remnants of a former Abengoa facility. READ MORE