The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) has announced another corn checkoff-supported development that will boost the entire ethanol industry. An agreement has been reached for the degermination host site at the Aberdeen, S.D., facility of Heartland Grain Fuels, LP.

Heartland Grain Fuels is a partnership between the South Dakota Wheat Growers Cooperative, one of the largest in the state of South Dakota, and Farmland Industries. The host plant has been operating since 1993, and is one of the prototype dry grind ethanol plants that have become very common as ethanol expanded in the 1990s.

Degermination is the process of separating germs before fermentation in the ethanol production
process, allowing plants to process more corn, more efficiently.

"Once again, checkoff-supported research is paying off in a way that will benefit corn growers
and the ethanol industry,'' said NCGA president-elect Lee Klein of Battle Creek, Neb. "NCGA is very pleased to announce this agreement with Heartland Grain Fuels.''

The goal of NCGA's degermination project is to determine the commercial feasibility of the degermination process and to define the benefits of the process to dry mill operations.

"If successful, this will offer new profitability opportunities for local plants across the Corn Belt,'' said Klein. "Degerm could add value from 20 cents to 35 cents per bushel of corn processed to ethanol and an additional potential to growers of value added from specialty oil traits.''

Currently, the project is midway through the pre-engineering phase and information is being assembled to move to the process engineering phase. This project has received targeted  checkoff funding from the Illinois Corn Marketing Board, the Iowa Corn Promotion Board's Market Development Committee, the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan and the Nebraska Corn Board. 

Company news release
N2751