Expansion at Emmetsburg: Poet gets $76 million for cellulosic production 


(Photo submitted) Poet LLC will receive $76.3 million in federal funding for added cellulosic production at its Emmetsburg plant.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Poet LLC will receive $76.3 million in federal funding to begin producing fuel from corn cobs and fiber, the nation's top ethanol producer said Tuesday.

Privately held Poet said it will expand capacity from 50 million to 125 million gallons per year at its corn ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, with about 25 million gallons made from plant waste typically left behind in farmers' fields.

With the added cellulosic production, a bushel of corn will produce 11 percent more ethanol per bushel of corn, and 27 percent more per acre of corn, Poet said.

"Grain based ethanol has been and will continue to be an important part of our country's energy supply," Jeff Broin, Poet's chief executive, said in a statement. "By pairing the production of cellulosic ethanol with our existing infrastructure of corn-based ethanol, we will continue to improve corn ethanol and accelerate the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol."

Poet built a $4 million pilot plant at its research center in Scotland, S.D., where it hopes to begin producing some 20,000 gallons of ethanol annually from corn cobs and fiber starting this year.

Poet said that discarded corn cobs and stalks can be removed from agricultural land without causing soil erosion or stealing soil nutrients. The company will need about 275,000 acres of cobs to supply its Emmetsburg plant, which is scheduled for retrofit construction starting in 2009 and operation beginning in 2011.

The Energy Department is covering $80 million of the project's $200 million cost. Poet used an initial $3.7 million from the Department of Energy on preliminary design, engineering and feedstock collection.

The federal grant is part of a program intended to make cellulosic ethanol competitive by 2012. The Energy Department in 2007 awarded $385 million to six companies hoping to build the nation's first large biomass-to-fuel plants.

Other projects in the works include efforts to make alternative fuels from switchgrass, wheat straw, timber scraps and citrus peels.

Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Poet, which has been making ethanol from corn for more than 20 years, operates 25 plants that collectively can pump out more than 1.4 billion gallons of the alternative fuel each year.