Highwater Ethanol Wraps Up Construction Projects at Lamberton, Minnesota Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Cooperative-owned Highwater Ethanol LLC (Lamberton, Minnesota) is wrapping up multi-million-dollar efficiency and retrofit projects at its Lamberton fuel ethanol plant.

The firm completed a 134-kilowatt (kW) solar array project in November at the plant site along with a 16-mile, 10-inch diameter pipeline project with a pump station located at the Red Rock quarry in Jeffers. The company also completed work on a metering station and equalization tank along with a lined storage pond and substation at the plant.

Construction is also wrapping up on a 600,000-bushel grain storage bin at the site to increase storage capacity. The plant requires about 22.3 million bushels of corn to reach permitted production capacity of 58 million gallons per year of fuel ethanol.

But the crown jewel project at the site, a $25 million plant retrofit, has been under way since mid-2014. Highwater Ethanol is still working on Phase II, and the project is slated for completion by May or June this year.

Phase I of the ethanol plant retrofit included installation of Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC's (Wilmington, Delaware) corn-oil separation technology. Phase II includes installation of fermentation and distillation equipment to produce 40 million gallons per year of bio-based isobutanol.

The company picked Fagen Incorporated (Granite Falls, Minnesota), which has experience in building ethanol plants, as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

Butamax is a joint venture company between E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont) (NYSE:DD) (Wilmington, Delaware) and BP plc (NYSE:BP) (London, England), and the project at Highwater is the first such installation for the company.

With advanced biofuel production getting continued support from both Republicans and Democrats, commercialization of cellulosic biofuel production is expected to grow to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022. But securing financing to build new facilities will continue pose a challenge for the industry.

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