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Alltech begins on rural biorefineryBy Doug Rich The Alltech North American Lecture Tour stopped in Lincoln, Neb., January on its way across the country. The tour started Jan. 7 in East Syracuse, New York and ended Jan. 18 in Lafayette, Ind. The theme for the tour this year was "The Feed Cost Puzzle: Performance or Profitability." Tour speakers examined ways to maintain performance and profitability in the midst of increasing raw ingredient cost, as well as presenting a strategy to maintain and grow in the midst of the energy crisis. In addition to updates on the benefits of Alltech's line of products including Solid State Fermentation (SSF), Sel-Plex, NuPro, and Optigen, company representatives announced their ambitious plan for a rural community biorefinery project. Alltech has received approval from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority for financial incentives to begin work on its first rural community biorefinery. The biorefinery concept integrates feed, food, and fuel production. According to Alltech the incentive will total $8 million and will be based on a sales tax refund for building and equipment costs, a state income tax wage reduction for new employment and a credit against state income taxes. In addition to this incentive there is a Department of Energy grant application pending to enable future development. Dr. Karl Dawson, Director of Worldwide Research for Alltech Inc., said this is a five-year project. The rural community biorefinery will utilize cellulose, such as switch grass, corn cobs, and corn stover at levels up to 30 percent of its raw material for conversion to ethanol and other value-added products. At a cost of approximately $40 million the first working model will be located in Springfield, Ky. "This plant goes beyond a typical ethanol facility by utilizing Alltech existing expertise in the area of Solid State Fermentation," the former Governor of Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher, said when announcing the incentive package. "This is the kind of facility we envisioned when drafting Kentucky's Incentives for Energy Independence Act." Compared to the large ethanol plants that are being built today this will be small, but that is by design. Dr. Dawson they kept the design small so it could replicated in rural areas around the country. Dr. Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech, said the goal of the biorefinery concept is to create a viable platform with as many value-added streams as possible using a flexible, integrate system capable of Adopting emerging technologies, products from this system will include ethanol and biodiesel renewable fuels and substrates that can be processed into three grades of ethanol. Carbon dioxide from the distillery process will be sold or used to extract oil for biodiesel use from the spent grains before drying. The biorefinery will include a solid-state fermentation system so that fungi can be used to produce a range of SSF products. The North American Lecture Tour gave Alltech an opportunity promote the World Equestrian Games to be in 2010 at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. The 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games will be Sept. 25 to Oct. 10. The event will feature eight equestrian sports including dressage, eventing, jumping, driving, endurance, reining, vaulting, and para-equestrian. This will be the first time this event has been held outside Europe. 3/10/08 Date: 3/4/08 Advertisement
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