North West Bio-Energy Loads First Tanker of Ethanol at Saskatchewan Ethanol Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Boutique fuel ethanol producer North West Bio-Energy Limited (Unity, Saskatchewan), a wholly owned subsidiary of North West Terminal Limited (Unity), loaded its first tanker of ethanol September 1, and is tweaking equipment and systems in anticipation of becoming fully operational later this month.

The project initially started site work back in October 2007 and, after some setbacks, construction resumed on the facility in the spring of 2008. The front-end wheat disc grinding system is fully operational and has the capacity to process 440 bushels of wheat per hour. The company chose a disc grinder instead of a traditional hammer mill because of the grinder's efficiency and noise reduction.

The plant will process wheat grains into 20 million liters (7 million gallons) per year of fuel ethanol from approximately 68,000 tons per year of wheat. The process technology was provided by Katzen International Incorporated (Cincinnati, Ohio) and construction was managed by FWS Industrial (Winnipeg, Manitoba). North West acted as their own general contractor, hiring the subcontractors.

The plant is located at North West Terminal's existing grain-handling terminal, 1 mile east on Unity and roughly 105 miles west of Saskatoon.

Cost estimates to build the plant are in the $54 million range.

Industrial Info's Ethanol Database provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging alternative fuels market. This database covers 192 ethanol plants in operation and 530 plants under development. It also covers 141 operational biodiesel plants and 245 biodiesel plants under development.

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