Bloomberg News is reporting that Center Ethanol LLC, a privately held refiner, will begin production at its distillery in Sauget later this month.
The biorefinery will produce about 54 million gallons of ethanol a year, Barry Frazier, the company’s president, told Bloomberg.
Center Oil Co., based in St. Louis, will market the ethanol.
This article didn’t state the source of ethanol. I am assuming it is corn. Does anyone realize that ethanol isn’t fit for mass production yet while using corn as the source? Totally inefficient both on an energy and investment perspective (especially when you take away any government funding). Ethanol production from corn still belongs in R&D labs of biotech companies and not in production. I have no doubt in my mind we will get there one day but it won’t be with corn anytime soon. The only thing corn has currently working for it in this process is the high availability of it. These companies should be investing in more in cellulistic sources, etc. I definetly wouldn’t want to be an investor of any corn based ethanol production company. Too many things working against them right now. I would like to be an investor in anything related to growing the corn though, because this foolish initiative will help out on incresing the price of corn thus lining the pockets of commercial farming operations and seed suppliers.
Douglas Wong is the National Editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Ethanol is a joke. It takes more energy to produce than it puts out. Not to mention the overuse of our precious farm land to grow fuel.
It’s time to start drilling in the United States and Gulf of Mexico.