Bio-Fuels Firm Briefs U.S. Agricultural Secretary on Breakthroughs in Downsizing Ethanol Production

Business Wire, May 2, 2007

WASHINGTON -- On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns was briefed by officials of EnerGenetics International, a Fort Madison, Iowa biotechnology research company regarding technology breakthroughs which can be used to economically downsize the production of ethanol and bio-butanol, while simultaneously producing new value added products to lower production costs. Sammy Pierce CEO of EnerGenetics presented the technology behind the "Mini-Biorefinery" or "MBR" which he believes will lead to the miniaturization of the bio-fuels industry, similar to the way the "mini-steel" mills have economically downsized production in the steel industry or the microbreweries have in the gigantic mass brewing industry.

In a meeting in the Agricultural Secretaries office also attended by Richard Brenner, The Assistant Administrator of the USDA's Office of Technology Transfer, L. Frank Flora, Senior National Program Leader for USDA's Agricultural Research Service, and Jackie Gleason Administrator of Business and Cooperative Programs of USDA's Rural Development, Pierce presented how MBR's are economically sustainable because they produce higher valued food and nutraceutical products from new corn hybrids developed by USDA. These new nutraceutical products are worth hundreds of times the value of animal feed which is currently produced by Ethanol plants. By producing these value-added food and nutraceuticals before the production of bio-fuels, the food value of the kernel is not sacrificed during the ethanol fermentation process and the production cost of making bio-fuels such as ethanol and bio-butanol can be substantially lowered.

These new corn hybrids have been developed over an 18 year period by the USDA and contain special traits of superior nutrition, drought resistance, reduced fertilizer requirements, and natural resistance to corn borer. These new hybrids, can be grown on arid and less fertile lands and Pierce believes this will lead to the expansion of corn ethanol production plants throughout the U.S. rather than just in the Midwest.

Mr. Pierce, also told the Ag-Secretary during their meeting that "other feedstocks can be processed in MBR's, including food wastes and sweet sorghum, which can yield almost three times the amount of ethanol per acre as corn", with projected yields from 850-900 gallons of ethanol per acre versus 350 gallons per acre from corn. Mr. Pierce further added: "If MBR's were constructed and drew from the feedstocks available in every county in the U.S., MBR's could significantly reduce the use of petroleum in the U.S. Instead of constructing the giant $100--300 million ethanol refineries we should be constructing thousands of MBR's which cost only $10-20 million each", he told the Ag-Secretary. EGI is currently running pilot plants utilizing the technology in Fort Madison IA, and 3 major U.S. Universities, and will shortly be up scaling the pilot plants to a pre-commercial size.