Badger State Ethanol LLC has recently expanded, increasing ethanol production to more than 90 million gallons at its facility near Monroe, Wisconsin. That more than doubles the facility’s original nameplate capacity of 40 million gallons when the plant began production in 2002.

Badger State Ethanol collaborated with Scott Lucas, director of engineering with LucasE3 LLC, to expand its ethanol output.

“LucasE3 is looking forward to bringing low-cost expansion opportunities to the industry,” Lucas said. “This project successfully demonstrates some of the technology being developed by our team.”

In the collaboration, Badger State Ethanol used LucasE3’s patent-pending efficient secondary-distillation system. The secondary-distillation system is innovative due to heat integrations that reduce total energy usage by 2,000 British thermal units per gallon for the plant, according to Badger State Ethanol.

Badger State Ethanol has experienced more than a 40 percent expansion to its distillation capacity, integrating it with its existing system. All plants are different, but according to LucasE3 such expansion will cost less than $1 per gallon.

“This seamless integration to our system upon start-up and the ease of continued operation have exceeded all our expectations,” said Erik Huschitt, Badger State Ethanol chief executive officer and general manager.

Badger State Ethanol is a dry-mill ethanol facility that also produces distillers dried grains with solubles and a feed that’s 50 percent corn protein on a dry-matter basis, as well as corn oil. Carbon dioxide is also captured for use in the food industry.

LucasE3 provides process and chemical-engineering services to ethanol plants throughout the United States and Canada. Visit www.lucase3.com or www.badgerstateethanol.com for more information.

Source: Agri-View