Q&A: A Man of Science Wears Many Hats

by Tom Portz (Ethanol Producer Magazine) Eric Sumner’s lifelong fascination with science spans from his youth to the cutting edge of ethanol plant bacterial control and the growing importance of coproducts for long-term industry viability.

Helping ethanol producers control bacteria without the use of antibiotics is the daily goal of Eric Sumner, global market development manager at DuPont Industrial Biosciences. Sumner also serves as president of the Distillers Grains Technology Council, a voice for the continued advocacy and market development efforts for this vital feed coproduct.

...Individual, severe batch infections can be a real problem. If they are bad enough they can cost upwards of $50,000 or more in losses. In addition to lost ethanol production, other serious effects of an acute upset result in continued high bacteria levels, high lactic and acetic acid in backset, high sugars and related problems in downstream operations, as well as a huge distraction away from other plant improvement efforts. Ongoing variation in performance is a much bigger problem and one of its root causes is ongoing bacteria presence in feedstock or the plant itself. It’s not uncommon for a typically sized plant, with fermentors sized around 800,000 gallons to produce about 13.7 percent ethanol on average from a batch fermentation. That’s by weight. But if they are able to eliminate variation in performance caused by chronic background contamination, they could produce 13.9 percent or more on average per batch. For a typical 100 million gallon per year plant this equates to over 1.5 million gallons per year in additional production. That’s almost $4 million per year.

...We all recognize that antibiotic resistant bacterial strains are a threat to our health. Resistance is also a concern in ethanol production. We have numerous strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria we have isolated in our laboratory. Most of these were brought to our attention by prospective customers who were not able to control them within their facility using virginiamycin or other antibiotics. READ MORE