Since 10% by volume of all the gasoline in the US is ethanol these days, this is where it comes from - not the pie-in-the-sky theories about cellulose or switchgrass - grain. Most people think that when grain is used to make ethanol that people starve because it's being used to fuel cars instead of food for people. Not true.
The byproduct from ethanol production is a sweet-tasting, light colored brown powder that provides a low fat, low starch, very high protein (about same as soy meal), highly digestible feedstuff for livestock called "distiller's grains".
We haul our corn to an ethanol plant about 35 miles away, and these are some photos of one of our recent runs to the plant
Pulled up in the waiting line to unload and a view of the plant from the service road - this plant produces 4.75 million gallons of ethanol per month. Each semi sitting in the line holds enough corn to produce 2,650 gallons of ethanol:
While we were sitting in the waiting line a tanker train came in and they were pulling the cars out to a switch track with a yard mule so the cars could get on a different track where they are loaded. My wife was sitting behind me in the line with her truck and she counted the cars when they went by - 84 tankers in this train. Each tanker holds 22,800 gallons of ethanol
Getting closer to the unloading bays in the waiting line and we're up by the bins now. Each one of these bins is 1.5 million bushels capacity. 1.5 million bushels is enough to make 4.1 million gallons of ethanol, so they go thru about one of these bins per month here. This plant unloads 30 semis per hour, six days a week
Under the sample probe now where they take a sample of the corn from each truck and test it before it's unloaded to make sure it's good.
They normally run two lanes of trucks unloading and two lanes of loadout for distillers grains here. On this particular day they had the left lane blocked because there was ice on top of those bins that was sliding off occasionally. A one ton chunk of ice coming from 150 feet up is a quite dangerous thing. When the chunks hit the ground it sounds like artillery being fired and the explosion on the ground is quite impressive. Not safe to be in that lane this day - and make sure you leave your driver's window rolled up on the truck or else you'll get sprayed by an ice explosion when some comes off the roof of that bin. It sounds like shrapnel hitting the truck.
Finally up to the door with my load - I've been in line here for about 15-20 minutes
And then I get inside and get unloaded. The scale has the dumps right in it so we never have to move our trucks. Just get on the scale, wait for the signal from the scale house that means they got your loaded weight, open the gates and dump it, then go in the scale house and get your scale ticket.
It takes less than 1 minute to unload 28 tons of grain here. And you have to be quick and efficient and know what you're doing. Our trucks have air suspension and we have to dump the air off the suspension to prevent damage to the air springs when the truck loses 28 tons of weight in 60 seconds. So you dump the tractor air off as you're getting out of the cab and grab the trap crank on the way out. Wait for the signal from the scale house, open the front hopper gate wide open, open the door on the side of the trailer for the air suspension and pull the knob to dump the trailer air off, open the rear gate wide open. Go to the back of the trailer and roll your tarp back over and lock it, close the rear hopper gate, charge the trailer air suspension, close the front gate, leave the crank handle on the gate shaft and go get your scale ticket. On the way back to the tractor you grab your crank handle off the front gate shaft, get in, charge the tractor suspension, release the brakes and get out of there.
If you waste even 5 seconds and don't complete the above procedure within one minute, one of the mill supervisors will come out of the scale house and chew your a$$ out for not knowing what you're doing - and tell you don't come back until you get your s^&t in one pile. My wife jumped out of her truck and took these photos with her cell phone while I was unloading:
Got some more photos I snapped on the way out, showing the tanks where the ethanol is stored and loaded out in trains and truck tankers, but ran out of room to put them here.
So there - that's where 10% of the fuel in all your cars comes from these days - us lowly farmers.
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Chris