Forest City, IA- The sputtering bio-diesel industry may be finding new life in North Iowa.
Growth Design Energy Corporation wants to build a new biodiesel plant near Forest City that will use brand new technology to produce the renewable fuel.
The biggest difference people will notice once the plant gets up and running in Winnebago County is its size. It will take up just three acres with one building the size of a large house.
C.E.O. Byron Tweeten grew up on the farmstead where the plant will go in North Iowa, now he's hoping to boost the economy with a new take on biodiesel.
"It's done without water it's done without chemicals, and therefore it's a very low cost, efficient process," Tweeten said.
It's called the Mcgyan process, and it takes about 40 seconds to turn a gallon of feedstock mixed with alcohol into a gallon of biodiesel. Unlike traditional methods using food quality soybean oil, they can use a variety of products to produce the fuel, including local restaurant waste grease and ethanol byproducts.
The idea was developed at the University of Minnesota. The key is this stainless steel reactor.
"A two million gallon reactor can sit on a table, it's about 8 feet long it weighs less than a ton and you can put three of them in a very small building," said Tweeten.
The smaller scale also cuts down on startup costs. A traditional plant costs about $60 million to get running. This one will cost less than ten million.
"Without the feed stock our production costs are a dollar or less, we know that we are profitable with purchasing feed stocks at current prices without government subsidies," Tweeten said.
Tweeten says lower costs should help them compete with oil companies when prices start to climb.
"We in fact could see prices start going back up again for oil gasoline and so on, which we would be producing a lower cost gallon of environmentally neutral biodiesel."
Iowa State is experimenting with pennycress to make biodiesel using the Mcgyan process.
Pennycress is commonly called stinkweed by farmers who try to get rid of it. The plant can produce more biodiesel than soybeans. Even more profitable for farmers, they could plant it during the winter between the fall harvest and spring planting.
Growth design energy hopes to get the plant up and running by late next summer. There is a prototype plant and research facility in Isanti, MN. It’s about three times larger than the one planned for Forest City.
Tweeten says they hope to open four plants a year over the next five years.
We also asked about the performance characteristics of the Biodiesel or B-100 will produce. He says the fuel will clean out a diesel engine, but has the same qualities as regular diesel.
They are putting they’re product to the test this coming Sunday at the development sight in Winnebago County.
The event will be held at the Growth Design Conference Center, 36438 190th Avenue, Forest City, Iowa 53406 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009. For further information, please contact Shelley Burgess at Growth Design Corporation (414.224.0586)]
