Dakota Spirit AgEnergy Ethanol Plant Set to Begin Operations in May

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Dakota Spirit AgEnergy LLC (Bismarck, North Dakota), a subsidiary of wholesale electric service provider Great River Energy (Maple Grove, Minnesota), is receiving corn and expects to begin producing fuel ethanol in May.

The project has been six years in the making, and some of the investors who are farmers have been waiting 15 years to have an ethanol plant as a customer for their corn. The Jamestown Sun quoted local farmer and plant investor Mike Clemens: "They gave us the call and said, 'Hey, they're starting to get ready to bring corn into the facility to test out the grain-handling and make sure everything is handling smoothly.'"

The estimated $150 million plant will process 23 million bushels of corn into 65 million gallons of fuel ethanol per year when running at full capacity. It also will produce an estimated 173,000 tons per year of distillers dried grains. A second phase of the project, to produce ethanol from cellulosic material, has been delayed.

Karges-Faulconbridge (Saint Paul, Minnesota) provides the ethanol process technology. The plant was built by design-build contractor McGough Construction Incorporated (Saint Paul).

The plant is located 11 miles east of Jamestown in Stutsman County. It can store as much as 1.75 million bushels of corn, which is enough feedstock to last for 25 days of continuous operation.

With four operational fuel ethanol plants, North Dakota ranks 10th in U.S. production. After the Dakota Spirit plant comes online, the state will have an estimated 360 million gallons of annual capacity.

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