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The Akron Hometowner

712.568.2208

110 Reed St., PO Box 797

Akron, IA 51001

Online Edition Archive

What will ethanol do for Akron, Westfield?

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of the impact of ethanol plants on Iowa communities.

What impact will an ethanol plant have on Akron and Westfield? Will it bring more families to the communities? Will it increase student enrollment at Akron-Westfi eld Community

School? How will it effect tax revenues? Will it benefit the already established businesses

in the two communities? Since Akron's will be coal- fired, will there be problems with coal emissions, coal dust and storage? What does the community need to do now to prepare

for the arrival of construction workers? Will there be social and/or criminal problems

with the construction crews? What does the community need to do to prepare for an ethanol plant in its midst? Are there traffic concerns, fire and rescue concerns that need addressed?

The answers are not known in Akron and Westfield simply because the Little Sioux Corn Processors LLLP ethanol plant is not built and operating yet, construction is slated to begin in Spring 2007. The communities of Goldfield and Nevada were the first communities in Iowa to have coal-fired ethanol plants. The Akron Hometowner traveled to Goldfield and Nevada to see what impact their coal-fired ethanol plants have had on those communities. The town of Goldfield is about 10 blocks by 10 blocks in size with a population of 680. Goldfield is part of the Clarion-Goldfield School District. Goldfield has an elementary school where preschool and third grade is taught. The rest of the students are educated at the school in Clarion. It looks like a “bedroom” community similar to Westfield. It even has its own chain saw artist. The Goldfield ethanol entrepreneurs toured the Little Sioux Corn Processors LLLP ethanol plant in

Marcus before deciding on an ethanol plant. Goldfield's ethanol plant sets about 1,000 feet from the town's most eastern street. Between that street and the ethanol plant is the

Gold-Eagle Cooperative elevators. That would be comparable to saying the street in Goldfield is Iowa Highway 12 here and the ethanol plant sets on the western side of Farmers Coop in Akron. Goldfield's ethanol plant is called Corn LP and is owned by Gold-Eagle Cooperative, the local farmers coop. Gold-Eagle Cooperative has the largest percentage  of ownership, said Corn LP General Manager Brad Davis, adding 76 percent of the owners live within 40 miles of Goldfield. “There is a separate board of directors for the ethanol plant,” said Davis. “We manage the facility; do all the merchandising.” “It's Gold-Eagle employees who operate the plant,” he added. “The plant manager reports to me.” “We have nine (elevator) locations from which we feed corn to the ethanol plant,” Davis explained. “Gold-Eagle sells the corn to the ethanol plant.” “This ethanol plant is set up like it's another Gold-Eagle location,” he said.

“Everything we set up out here is fairly unique,” said Davis. “It works pretty slick here.” “It's a 50 million gallon ethanol plant but we will expand to 100 million in 2009,” said Davis. Corn LP is building a second ethanol plant at Wesley. It will be a 100 million gallons facility. The equity drive will begin in February 2007 with construction later that Spring. There are plans for a biodiesel plant at Goldfield but it is not through Gold-Eagle Cooperative. Effect on City Utilities Goldfield has its own municipal water and sewer utilities but not electrical. The ethanol plant uses no city utilities for its ethanol production even though the land it sets on was annexed into the city. The Corn LP only uses city water for drinking water at the plant and city sanitary sewer for the plants' toilets. The Corn LP plant is hooked to Goldfield's water tower just in case there would be an emergency need for water. The biggest question in Akron and Westfield residents' minds seems to be what will a coal-fired plant do to the community environment. Goldfield residents didn't know the ethanol plant was up and operating for about two weeks, said Davis, explaining that with a coal fired plant, there is no vapor cloud shown out of the stacks unless the temperature drops below 50 degrees. “We're evaporating 60,000 pounds of water per hour from our dryers,” said Davis. “It's just because of the temperature and humidity that you see nothing.” There are no black smoke clouds like people may remember seeing at the Pittsburgh steel mills, he said. “That's not the case with

today's technology.” Corn LP uses Powder River Basin coal from Wyoming. It is trucked in because they wanted to focus on making ethanol, not unloading train cars, said Davis. The largest coal pieces are half the size of a man's fist, he said. The trucks pull into a “coal delivery” building, which is like driving into an above-ground tunnel -- the whole truck and trailer fit inside this building where the coal is unloaded. Inside the building is a computerized weigh scale which weighs the truckload to verify the amount of coal received, he explained.

As the coal is unloaded, the building is “fogged,” just like fog coming off the coastal waters, said Davis. At three gallons of fog per minute, the fog attaches to the microscopic coal particles, making the particles drop, preventing coal dust issues. “Unless the wind is really blowing, we leave the doors (where the trucks enter and exit) open. “You don't see any coal particles or dust around here,” said Davis. On the day of The Akron Hometowner 's visit, there were a few coal pieces on the ground outside the building due to a truck losing them as it left the building. Davis told The Akron Hometowner that this building had not been cleaned once in its nearly 11 months of operation. The Akron Hometowner noted that there was just a slight whitecolored dusty film -- similar to a dust coating one finds in their home when they live on a gravel road in Plymouth County and dust on a regular basis. There was no dust on The Akron

Hometowner's vehicle after being parked at the plant office, about 1,000 feet from ethanol plant for a couple of hours. One gets much more debris on their vehicle parked at the west end of Reed Street during harvest in Akron. The Goldfield ethanol plant receives 12 truckloads of coal each day plus loads of limestone which is unloaded in this same building. All handling of coal is done inside the facility. There is no outside storage of coal. “You wouldn't know this is a coal-fired facility,” said Davis, adding if they decide later on to bring the coal in by railroad car, they will continue to unload coal inside a building. The Goldfield ethanol plant has two large coal storage silos, which hold 1,100 tons of coal each. Carbon dioxide is pumped into

the silos to displace oxygen, which prevents spontaneous combustion of the coal. Spontaneous combustion can happen when coal is stored longer than its shelf-life of about ' days. “We have seven to eight days supply on site,” said Davis. The coal comes out of the bottom of the silos, then goes through a “sizer,” which grinds the coal so that each piece is no more than one-fourth inch in diameter. The crushed coal is then transported by conveyor belt to three stoker bins and into the furnace. As the coal burns, the heat in the furnace is transferred into a boiler to produce steam. “Throughout the whole plant we need steam to make it function,” said Davis. “That's really the difference between coal-fired and gas-fired -- where steam is being produced from the heat of the coal. The only other difference between the two heating systems is that the coal-fired plant has two large fans instead of one. Every

ethanol plant has to have a fan in the thermal oxidizing process to take care of organic compounds when drying distiller grains, just like a cooperative uses to dry corn. A coal-fired plant has another fan which blows air through the furnace to keep the oxygen level high enough to get a good burn from the coal. “The rest of the plant is identical to a gas-fired plant,” said Davis, adding it costs a lot more to build a coal-fired plant. Coal ash particles leftover from the burning of the coal fall down into stainless steel ash collectors and are transported to an ash storage bin. During the burning process limestone is added to remove sulfur and anhydrous ammonia is used to help control “NOX,” nitric oxide by-products from being emitted. Any coal particles which remain suspended are removed as it goes through the next building, which is called the “bag house.” This building is like a huge vacuum cleaner,” explained Davis. “Everything has to go through the filter bags before it can go out as exhaust through the chimney so that eliminates our particles.” The final ash is removed from

the plant by being loaded inside a building, too, said Davis. “With the permitting you do with the Department of Natural Resources and the amount of particulate you are allowed to emit - - whether unloading corn, coal or dried distiller grain -- it all has to be measured and controlled,” said Davis, “so you don't have those (environmental issues).” “Even if we wanted to be poor steward of the environment, we just didn't care and were going to do it anyway, legally we couldn't do it,” said Davis. There is a small building setting adjacent to the coal delivery building, which contains the Continuous Emissions Monitoring System. “We're monitoring (24 hours a day, seven days a week) emissions going out of the stacks,” said Davis. “The DNR and EPA can come in and look at it at any time. All the data is fed into our system as well. (Our computer operations personnel) continuously monitor the levels.” “They will absolutely, positively never know there is an ethanol plant (in Akron),” said Davis. “There will be no odors, no smoke. There will be no noise. They've got truck traffic on a major highway.” “There's going to be tremendous opportunity for people who want to change job responsibilities or people who need to move to Akron because they got a job in Akron,” said Davis. The Goldfield Fire Department consists of volunteer fire-fighters like Akron's. Gold-Eagle Cooperative took a proactive stance when it came to preparing for any future industrial

disasters such as chemical leaks, injured employees or an explosion, said Davis. Any disasters would be similar to a gas station fire, a tanker tipped over or an employee being injured -- cuts, bruises or needing rescued from tops of silos, he said. During the construction phase, they had about 10 different meetings with area fire departments, which would respond to any disasters at the facility. The firefighters were given many tours of the facility during construction so they would have firsthand knowledge of how the facility was built and operated. In addition, Gold-Eagle Cooperative contributed between $10,000 and $15,000 to the departments to pay for training the responders needed in case there was an issue, said Davis. There wasn't much more training the firefighters needed but Gold-Eagle Cooperative donated a barrel of ethanol for the firefighters ' training. “We provided as much as we could for specific training,” said Davis, adding that they also keep special foam on hand at the ethanol