The first ethanol plant that runs on a closed loop production system, eliminating the need for fossil fuels, will commence operations in December.
Dennis Langley, Chairman and CEO of E3 BioFuels, announced the Genesis plant, located in Mead, Nebraska, will run on methane gas recaptured from cow manure, instead of fossil fuels.
The proprietary closed-loop system combines a 25-million-gallon ethanol refinery, beef cattle feedlot, and anaerobic digesters to maximize energy efficiencies unavailable to each component on a stand-alone basis. The system eliminates the potential for manure to pollute watersheds, while enabling the wet distillers grain from ethanol production to be fed on-site to cattle without energy-intensive drying and transportation costs.
In the October edition of Wired Magazine, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla writes, “It may surprise you to learn that the most promising solution to our nation’s energy crisis begins in the bowels of a waste trough, under the slotted concrete floor of a giant pen that holds 28,000 … beef cattle.”
Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, continues, “E3 BioFuels is about to fire up the most energy efficient corn ethanol facility in the country: a $75 million state-of-the-art biorefinery … The output: a potential gusher of renewable, energy-efficient transportation fuel.”
“The Genesis plant at Mead will be the first to market ethanol produced from closed-loop, self-sustaining ethanol technology by at least a year or two, in comparison to any other competitors,” Langley said. “This plant will make ethanol more than twice as energy-efficient as any other method of producing ethanol or gasoline.”
Langley said E3 BioFuels plans to build 15 more such plants near feedlots and dairy farms, of increasing size, within the next five years.