Arizona's first commercial-scale ethanol plant began producing the alternative fuel Monday near the town of Maricopa, opening what the factory's operators hope will be a new energy era for the state.
The ethanol made at the Pinal Energy LLC complex initially will be blended with gasoline at tank farms in west Phoenix to make gasoline burn more cleanly. But eventually the Arizona-made ethanol could become E85 — a fuel that is a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.
Construction of the $74 million fermentation and distillation plant was completed in early June, but start-up testing of the complex array of conveyer belts, funnels, pipes and tanks took about a month and a half. The plant began grinding corn, the feedstock from which the ethanol is produced, on Thursday, and the first fuel was distilled Monday, said John Skelley, general manager of Pinal Energy.
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But the start-up was not trouble-free.
"We lost a boiler Sunday night," Skelley said. "In a startup like this, you'll have malfunctions."
The plant was back on line producing ethanol Monday afternoon, he said.
Although the 25-acre agri-industrial complex looks complicated to the untrained eye, it actually is pretty basic science, Skelley said.
First, the company hauls in corn kernels by the trainload from the Midwest and pulverizes them into flour. Hot water and enzymes are added, with the enzymes breaking starch in the corn into sugar, creating a beer-type mixture of glucose, water and solid particles.
The next step adds yeast, which turns the glucose into alcohol through fermentation. The alcohol is heated to 170 degrees Fahrenheit in three giant distillation columns, boiling the alcohol and separating it from the water and solids.
The alcohol vapor is forced through molecular sieves that purify it into pure alcohol. The vapor then is cooled to a liquid form and in the final step is "denatured" by mixing it with a small amount of gasoline to create fuel.
The solids will be used as cattle feed for feed lots that surround the plant. About 35 percent of the water used in the process will be recycled to make more ethanol.
Eventually Pinal Energy hopes to acquire most of its corn and milo, another ethanol feedstock, from Arizona — making it a truly local fuel.
"Ideally, we would like to grow all of the crops here, produce the fuel here and sell the ethanol here," Skelley said.
Concurrently with the plant opening, the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council is launching an effort to encourage gas-station owners to offer E85 at their pumps in Maricopa County. The fuel is available in Tucson but not in the Phoenix area.