Ethanol Education
Welcome to the Sioux Center Ethanol Plant--the second of the
Intro to Environmental Studies class/Creation Care Club
investigation of energy sources--
one of the places all that Iowa corn goes...
a lot of yeast
This house sized tank is full of what they call "beer"
This particular plant is more energy efficient than most because they buy the corn fresh (the farmer don't have to dry it out before bringing it in) and they don't dry the solid leftovers either (they sell it damp back to the farmers to feed it to their cattle). The really neat part of ethanol production is that all three of the bi-products are used--the liquid syrup is fed to cattle along with the corn solids and the steam goes up into the sky and comes back somewhere as rain.
One of the ironies of this "sustainable" energy source (which is mixed with gasoline and sold at the pump as E 85 for a cheaper price than straight up gas) is it being produced by machines being powered by natural gas and trucked away in diesel vehicles. Some people argue that Ethanol uses as much or more energy to produce as it creates, but at least it burns cleaner than gasoline and is right from the heartland, right?
For the record, Sioux Center is powered 70% by coal and 30% by hydroelectric power.
So far, I favor wind energy.