Kansas Ethanol Plant Poised to Start up Anaerobic Digester Soon

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December 31, 2012

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by Holly Jessen (Ethanol Producer Magazine) If all goes as planned, a 50 MMgy ethanol plant in Oakley, Kan., will someday produce advanced biofuel from sorghum. To qualify as advanced biofuel, the company will power the plant with methane from its anaerobic digester system as well as utilizing other advanced technologies.
…At full digester capacity, which the company expects to reach in March, the digesters will produce enough methane to completely refire the plant’s thermal oxidizer and boiler. In other words, the facility won’t need to use any natural gas and could someday even generate its own electricity with additional equipment.
…“Milo has kind of been our niche all around. When you live in a desert you have to use what grows well and grain sorghum certainly grows well here. It’s much more drought tolerant.”
Western Plains Energy received a $15.6 million grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce, which it used to help build the digester system, installed by Himark biogas. Although the project was estimated to cost between $35 and $40 million, the final tally is somewhere upwards of $40 million. Still, McNinch said he doesn’t expect future digester projects to be that expensive. “There was a lot of engineering being done as we were building,” he said.
The digester will primarily be fed with manure from a local feedlot. Other ingredients include thin stillage from the ethanol plant and food waste. Although there is interest in powering ethanol plants with biogas, full-scale adoption of the technology has been slow. READ MORE

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