Menlo, Iowa-A small alternative energy company has announced that its first plant for turning corn cobs into anhydrous ammonia will be built in this Iowa community about 45 miles west of Des Moines. SynGest Inc., based in the San Francisco area with an engineering team in the Chicago area, expects to start construction early next year and be in full-scale production by 2011. SynGest president and CEO Jack Oswald told Green Markets that the enclosed gasification process can handle most any type of corn stover, but SynGest is concentrating on the cobs as the ideal raw material, with more density and about the right moisture content. “When we’re ready to actually process, the cobs go through a chopper which cuts them half to an inch in size,” Oswald explained. “If needed they’re dried somewhat to reduce to 10 percent in moisture. It’s fundamentally gasification in a closed encloser. So we’re capturing everything with no emissions from producing synthesis gas or syngas.” He said the result is a different combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which are the two main components of syngas. “With those two we can actually make many different products but the most valuable today is anhydrous ammonia,” he added. Of course, he noted, SynGest picked Iowa because it’s the number one corn-producing region in North America, but also because the state is very proactive in its support of innovative agricultural and renewable energy technologies. He said SynGest hopes to build several of these plants.
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