Agri-Energy Restarts Former Gevo Ethanol Plant in Minnesota
Agri-Energy LLC’s 18-million-gal/yr ethanol plant in Luverne, Minn., has restarted operations after being idle for three years, the company confirmed in an interview on Tuesday.
“We just started back up a week ago yesterday, so we’re probably not up to max capacity today yet. It might take us another week or even two to get to that point,” Agri-Energy President Dan Heard told OPIS.
“We’re running into a few issues, but we expected that after it hadn’t been running for three years,” Heard said.
Englewood, Colo.-based biofuel producer Gevo acquired the 25-acre plant in September 2010 and modified it to produce ethanol and biobutanol. At the time, the company also used the facility as a demonstration site in conjunction with local farmers to educate its stakeholders about regenerative agriculture and the versatility of corn and its co-products.
In November, Gevo completed the sale of the facility to Agri-Energy, along with a portion of the adjacent land.
As part of the sale, Gevo retained some assets at the site, allowing it to continue to utilize differentiated and patented fermentation technologies with the capacity to produce 1 million gal/yr of biobutanol for use in chemicals markets, as feedstock for racing fuels, gasoline, and jet fuel, according to its website.
Heard said that while Gevo isn’t currently involved in day-to-day operations, that could change in the future.
“They do have the legal right to come back and make isobutanol, but we don’t know if they’ll ever do that,” Heard said.
Agri-Energy, an agriculture-oriented buyer group consisting of 115 local investors, the majority of whom are farmers, acquired the plant from Gevo with the intent to use the site to produce not only ethanol, but also to make the site available for other companies to scale up novel technologies, such as potentially incorporating carbon capture or integrating biochemicals production, according to Heard.
Adding to the company’s innovative ambitions, the facility’s carbon-friendly footprint is aided by sourcing more than 70% of its electricity from hydropower, supplemented by two wind towers providing 1.5 MW each.
“The equipment is not just standard ethanol equipment anymore. Gevo installed a lot of stuff that was very specific. Because of the isobutanol, they had to add assets that would not normally be in an ethanol plant, and so because of that, that helps us do a lot of that innovation,” Heard said.
Reporting by Bryan Sims, bsims@opisnet.com; Editing by Jordan Godwin, jgodwin@opisnet.com