Hello Ron,
Thank you for your comparison. However, there are several more things to consider when discussing real costs that are not included in your summary. Your numbers do not indicate any electrical generation (or costs if not generated on site), typical of large US operations. Our "distilleries in a box" need the electrical generation, since they are designed for locations where local supplies are often insufficient or non-existent. Cost of fuel allocation for the system you describe should be included and natural gas isn't cheap any more. Also, many small rural communities do not have natural gas, depending instead on bottled gas (propane/butane). Old Crow (a whisky distillery) used a coal-fired boiler and had a 23,000 volt electrical supply into the distillery. So let's get back to comparing apples with apples. Our box is still cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate... Also please remember that we process total biomass and do not pay for the expensive grains that you mentioned. Our by products are not necessarily distiller's grains and can be a used in a variety of different applications such as fertilizers. I borrowed parts of this message from out biochemist's response to your email. Peggy From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 8:12 PM Subject: [Biofuel] Re: Farmer's Lobby UPDATE > I have quotes from some of the big guys for > what they consider a "Minimum" size turnkey ethanol plant, and the > numbers are scary. The way I break it down, their quotes are around > $4.50 - $5.00 per gallon of annual ethanol capacity. That translates to > a small 5 million gallon/year distillery costing about $25 million. > They would much rather build a 50 million gallon/year distillery for > about $200 million, since the same time and energy is expended in > designing each." =================================== Folks, Corn = Maize MGY = million gallons per year 50 million gallons = 189,271,000 liters On a previous reply earlier today, I was not correct by stating that the above 200 million costs were 4 times inflated (my estimate was $50 mill). An actual estimate below comes to $79,499,800 for a new 50 MGY plant. I would like to know if the turnkey distillery that Peggy was thinking about above, would use a wet mill or dry mill process. That could mean a great deal on costs per gallon of ethanol produced. A wet mill is more expensive to build and operate. New natural gas fired 50 MGY DRY mill plant quoted start up costs for ground breaking early next year (in $USD): Plant construction- 60,264,881 Land & Development- 3,630,000 Railroad tracks- 2,435,000 Admin building- 210,000 Office Equipment- 75,000 Computers,software- 100,000 Construction bond- 500,000 Const. insurance- 120,000 Const. Contingency- 1,009,919 Fire protect & water 840,000 Capitalized interest- 1,350,000 Rolling stock- 320,000 Start up costs- 8,645,000 ==================================== Total 79,499,800 Start up costs would be such items as fuel, corn feedstock inventories, financing costs, pre-production costs, working capital, chemicals, ingredients, and spare parts. 1) Let us remember that the 50 MGY output is a 'guarantee' and that in actual practice from previous plant experiences, the output is around 3 million gallons OVER the guarantee after the first or second year. 2) These plants have all the bells and whistles today with regard to pollution controls and...you won't get a neighbor complaining about the smells. 3) Also, a co-product is produced for sale (protein feed) that can add 20% to the revenue stream. Ron B. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
