Report: Combined Heat and Power can Significantly Alter Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions for Corn Ethanol Production

Green Car Congress has done an excellent writeup on a report released by the EPA on dry mill ethanol plants that incorporate Combined Heat and Power (CHP) into their production process. CHP is also known as cogeneration and is the production of electricity as part of the production process. It results in a substantial energy savings.

The adoption of combined heat and power (CHP) in dry mill ethanol plants can reduce total energy use by up to almost 55% over state-of-the-art dry mill ethanol plants that purchase central station power and can result in negative net CO2 emissions depending upon the fuel type used and CHP configuration, according to an updated report by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) CHP Partnership.

Full Green Car Congress Writeup

EPA Report

I have been researching ethanol plants using CHP for a while now and here is a list of the plants that employ it.

Adkins Energy LLC - Lena, Illinois
White Energy (Formerly U.S. Energy Partners LLC) - Russell, Kansas
East Kansas Agri-Energy LLC - Garnett, Kansas
Sterling Ethanol - Sterling, Colorado
Front Range Energy - Windsor, Colorado
Yuma Ethanol - Yuma, Colorado
Central Illinois Energy - Canton, Illinois
Central Minnesota Ethanol - Little Falls, Minnesota
Poet - Ashton, Iowa
Poet - Macon, Missouri
Poet - Laddonia, Missouri