August 19, 2006

Cooking up a way to ease energy crisis
Hoosiers building still to make ethanol

By Grace Schneider
The Louisville Courier-Journal

Mark Bush spent yesterday morning sawing and nailing two-by-fours, creating a skeletal chute on the side of a garage near Lanesville.

By noon the businessman and weekend carpenter had slipped a shiny copper chimney inside the wooden structure -- works that bore an amazing resemblance to a moonshine still.

It's a still all right. But Bush and others expect to brew ethanol in the weeks and months to come.

The effort is a pilot project of a new organization of Harrison County farmers, small-business owners and entrepreneurs who are exploring ways to boost the value of local farm products and the use of renewable energy.

"This is not kindergarten science, I can tell you that," said Steve Boehman, owner of The Fun Farm, a paintball center and amusement park on Breckinridge Lane, where the small ethanol plant is being built.

Boehman and others who have formed the Harrison County Independent Business Alliance have chipped in $2,500 in cash and supplies to build the works.

They plan to cook up their first batch of corn, water and enzymes over the weekend.

Learning the process and about the equipment is the immediate objective, so farmers and other residents can use the startup to guide their own home-based plants, Boehman said.

The alliance's ultimate goal is far more ambitious -- to build a $50 million, industrial-size manufacturing facility to produce up to 20 million gallons of ethanol a year.

Six Hoosier communities already have built large ethanol plants, and another three, including Montgomery County, have proposals well under way, according to Purdue University's cooperative extension service, which is providing advice on several renewable fuels efforts.

Surging gasoline and diesel fuel prices have led many states to offer tax incentives and grant programs to spur similar alternative fuels projects. Last year's federal Energy Policy Act requires an increase in the use of ethanol, among other measures.

Making ethanol is similar to producing corn liquor, except that the brew has a far higher proportion of alcohol. A manual that the alliance ordered along with the copper chimney from Dogwood Energy Inc. of Manchester, Tenn., provides a recipe in which corn, water and enzymes -- which break down the carbohydrates in the grain -- are boiled in a large drum.

Yeast is added and the mixture is fermented for two or three days. Then the filtered brew is reheated to 180 degrees, with the copper condensation column Bush installed used to distill the alcohol.

Jim Heitkemper, a Republican county commissioner and farmer who has worked with the alliance since it was formed last year, attended the group's meeting Thursday when the members discussed the project in detail.

He's thrilled the alliance is trying something new, even if the first batches go sour.

"They're an impatient bunch," said Heitkemper, who has offered to try the fuel in one of his 50-year-old tractors.

Overall, he said, the effort should provide some valuable information about small and large production facilities, where farmers would have a ready market for their corn.

"We're trying to come up with solutions to problems," Heitkemper said. "We know once we point the way, others can follow."

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060819/NEWS02/608190411

©2006 Courier-Journal

Fair Use Notice
This site occasionally reprints copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues and to highlight the accomplishments of our affiliates. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is available without profit. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

---