By Mike Bryan
November 01, 2007
Ethanol producers will face, overcome new challenges
Although funding for new ethanol plants hasn't totally dried up, the same pitch developers made to banks last year probably won't produce the same results today. In the current lending environment only well-established producers with solid concepts, ideal sites and an experienced management team will bring home the bacon.
As the U.S. Senate continues to haggle over its version of the Farm Bill, the counterpart legislation passed by the House holds a provision that has some ethanol producers and sugar processors talking. Under the provision, the government would be allowed to sell surplus sugar to ethanol producers.
EPM talks with Drying Technology Inc. about its Delta T Moisture Control System to save ethanol producers cash by gaining tighter moisture control in their distillers grains dryers.
The race to commercialize a scheme for producing ethanol from an array of biomass feedstocks that is cost-competitive with the fossil-based alternative is muddied by a labyrinth of expensive and time-consuming technologies. A new spin-off company, however, aims to commercialize a consolidated bioprocess that promises to create a renewable competitor for gasoline.
By Bryan Sims
November 01, 2007
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