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Buildings
Upstate Energy: Building Two Ethanol Plants in New York
(newyork.construction.com - August 2005 issue)
By Fred
Fanning
Two developers plan to break ground
this year on new fuel ethanol plants in upstate New York,
hoping to tap a growing market.
Two companies are planning to break
ground on new renewable-fuel ethanol plants in upstate New
York. The plants would create a product to replace a gasoline
oxygenation agent that New York and Connecticut banned last
year.
One project in Fulton, N.Y., will entail
converting a former brewery into an ethanol plant. The other
involves new construction of an $80 million plant on the banks
of the Erie Canal in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
The state's ban on methyl tertiary butyl
ether, or MTBE, follows years of studies that show the additive
pollutes groundwater and is a carcinogen. The ban has created
a market for fuel ethanol as a replacement oxygenation agent,
and according to Seneca Falls-based Empire Biofuels, one of
the developers, 300 million gallons of ethanol are already
blended into gasoline sold in New York.
In addition to the demand, one of the
plants responds to the logic that it's easier to transport
local corn to a nearby plant than to transport ethanol from
outside the region to the New York market, said Anne Marie
McManus, senior associate at Malcolm Pirnie of White Plains,
N.Y. The environmental engineering firm is handling environmental
permitting for Empire Biofuels, a consortium of New York corn
growers.
"It makes more sense to put the
plants where the ethanol demand is," McManus said. "There
are only 80 facilities nationwide, so Empire Biofuels is filling
a need in this region."
Construction of the Seneca Falls plant
is slated to begin this fall. In addition to supplying the
fuel ethanol market, it could also produce sweetened corn
syrup or make ethanol from alternative feedstock.
"We are starting with corn at our
production facility because we are corn farmers, and that
is what we know," said Jeannette Marvin of Empire Biofuels.
"But we are not closing our eyes to the future, and may
expand the possibilities of the products we can produce."
A joint venture is handling construction
of the plant, led by T. E. Ibberson Co., an agribusiness construction
and engineering firm in Hopkins, Minn. The other partners
are Delta-T Corp., a Williamsburg, Va., construction company
with several ethanol plants in its portfolio, and the Industrial
Co. of Steamboat Springs, Colo.
"T.E. Ibberson is taking the lead
on the project," said Wayne Wajciechowski, project manager
with Delta-T. "We are applying engineering and technology."
The plant, slated for completion a year
after groundbreaking, will draw limited amounts of water from
the nearby canal, and will have rail infrastructure onsite.
Meanwhile, in the other project, Northeast
Biofuels of Dewitt, N.Y., is planning to transform a former
Miller Brewing Co. facility in the Riverview Business Park
in Fulton into a fuel ethanol production plant.
The facility will use many of the brewing
vessels and fermentation tanks already in place, because the
fermentation process is similar for beer and ethanol. But
the ethanol brewing process takes a further step by removing
moisture through distillation columns and molecular sieves.
Therefore, the $160 million project also entails the construction
of a new cooling tower and twin distilling columns inside
the existing facility.
"We are going to drop one of the
buildings that used to have grains drying for Miller Brewery,"
added J. Michael Hadley, CFO of Northeast Biofuels. "We
are going to erect our own grains-drying grain storage area."
The main reason to replace the Miller
grains building is that it was designed to leave water in
the grains. The new building will dry the grains completely,
but its equipment needs more space.
With O'Brien and Gere Engineers of Syracuse,
N.Y., recently completing the permitting process, Lurgi PSI,
a Memphis-based firm, is expected to begin construction this
summer. Among the major interior tasks will be retrofitting
the electrical and piping systems.
On the outside, a new six-cell cooling
tower on the southern part of the site will be the most visible
part of the construction effort. The 20- by 60- by 15-ft.
structure will remove excess heat during the fermentation
process.
Other sitework will involve railyard
infrastructure improvements to prepare the facility to handle
250 rail cars per week of Midwest corn. The yard will also
act as an anchor location for the state's North Country freight
rail system.
"This will be one of the largest
privately held railyards on the CSX line east of the Mississippi,"
said Stewart Hancock, a spokesman for Northeast Biofuels.
Another company, meanwhile, plans to
construct a $15 million liquefaction plant to capitalize on
a byproduct of the ethanol plant - the large volume of carbon
dioxide released when corn ferments into alcohol. That adjacent
facility, planned by BOC Group of the United Kingdom, will
harvest, scrub, and compress the CO2. It will produce more
than 800 tons of CO2 annually for use in a variety of products,
such as soda, beer, and other carbonated beverages, and as
a propellant in aerosol cans as well.
Key Players
Empire
Biofuels ethanol plant
Owner: Empire Biofuels, Dewitt, N.Y.
Construction Manager: The Industrial
Co., Steamboat Springs, Colo.
Process Technology Contractor:
Delta-T Corp., Williamsburg, Va.
Construction Manager (grains handling):
T.E. Ibberson, Hopkins, Minn.
Environmental Engineer: Malcolm
Pirnie Inc., White Plains, N.Y.
Northeast
Biofuels ethanol plant:
Owner: Northeast Biofuels, Fulton, N.Y.
Construction Manager, Engineer:
Lurgi PSI, Memphis
Engineer: O'Brien and Gere
Engineers, Syracuse, N.Y.
Useful Sources
Renewable
Fuels Association
Governor's
Ethanol Coalition
American
Coalition for Ethanol
Ethanol
Producers and Consumers
National
Ethanol Vehicle Coalition
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