Mendota, CA bioenergy sugar beet plant gets $5M grant to produce ethanol.

The grant allows the Mendota Advanced Bioenergy Beet Cooperative to launch a pilot plant in Five Points capable of converting about 10,000 tons of beets into 285,000 gallons of ethanol.

In central California, the bio-refinery would resurrect a crop that has nearly vanished. The birthplace of the sugar beet industry, California once grew over 330,000 acres of the gnarly root vegetable, with 11 sugar mills processing the beets. But as sugar prices collapsed, the mills shut down. Only one remains in the Imperial Valley.

The beet feedstock for the plant are called energy beets, not sugar beets. “You have to forget about the sugar like we did when we grew beets for the sugar market,” said farmer Rusty Gragnani. Energy beets are larger and are likely to produce 50 to 60 tons per acre versus the more typical 40 tons when beets are produced for sugar only.

"This is the first energy beet project to advance to the pilot and demonstration phase in the United States," said Jim Tischer, a project manager for the refinery plant.

If the pilot is successful and financing is secured, a full-scale biofinery plant would be built near Mendota, with a possible start-up by 2017. The $162 million biorefinery would create about 250 direct jobs and 50 indirect construction jobs.

Project officials say the biorefinery would provide multiple benefits. Not only would it produce about 40 million gallons of ethanol annually, a bio-mass line would burn wood waste to generate 6.3 megawatts of electricity. And waste pulp from the beets and other material would be processed to produce 1.6 million cubic feet of biomethane to make compressed natural gas.

Presently, 95% of ethanol for fuel is produced from fermented & distilled corn. Of the US corn crop, about 40% is used for livestock feeds, 40% is used for ethanol (heavily subsidized), and just 20% is used for food & beverages.

FresnoBee.com
Western Farm Press