Southwest Iowa Renewable Optimistic About Late December Ethanol Plant Start-Up

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Investor-owned Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy (SIRE) (Council Bluffs, Iowa) is optimistic that it can start up a new ethanol plant in Council Bluffs by the end of the month. Currently, SIRE's design-build team of ICM Incorporated (Colwich, Kansas) and Todd & Sargent (Ames, Iowa) are wrapping up start-up procedures, and contractors are demobilizing from the site.

The plant began taking in corn into its 1 million-bushel corn-storage facilities in November and completed construction of grain-handling facilities. The storage facility consists of two 74-foot-by-150-foot high slip formed storage silos tied to four hammermills with a 6,000-bushel-per-hour grinding capacity.

Once start-up procedures are complete, the plant will have a nameplate production capacity of 110 million gallons per year of ethanol and require more than 39 bushels of locally grown corn to operate annually. The plant will also produce more than 300,000 tons of dried distillers grains and approximately 43,000 tons of wet distillers grains annually.

Construction of the estimated $185 million plant started in December 2006 and took two years to complete. The plant is located on 195 acres of land at 10868 189th St. in Council Bluffs in Pottawattamie County. An official grand-opening ceremony is expected to take place in spring 2009.

Industrial Info's Ethanol Database provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging alternative fuels market. This database covers 177 ethanol plants in operation and 530 plants under development. It also covers 145 operational biodiesel plants and 245 biodiesel plants under development.

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