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| The top secret reply:
Ron, in todays dry mill process you get around 2.7 gallons of ethanol, ~16 lbs. of dried distillers grains with soluble's (ddgs) and ~ 18 lbs of CO 2 per bushel of corn. Every system, method, process, management, etc will vary a bit; but, the co-products will come back to a ratio of the 56#, 15% moisture corn put in the front end, and be equal to that in weight. Unless you've found a good alchemist, it don't work any other way.
One thing that can throw the ETOH number is denaturant. Most plants and process engineering Co.'s use denatured gallons in the production numbers you see. To meet BATF regs for fuel ethanol it's poisoned by adding something, usually unleaded gasoline, at between 3.?? and 5.??% rate.
Value or market value of ddgs? That's the real secret! Depends on who's selling it and where it's going. Local markets "here" are saturated and the wet cake (not dried, used for cattle feed) can be found at times for free. Local truck markets (dried) get overloaded frequently with rail problems. It's a market still in it's infancy, no standards across the industry, little reliability between producers and it has some handling issues that may or may not all be worked out. WAG prices run from 70-140% of the price of corn for ddgs. Wet cake ~35% dm, free were demand lags to $40/ton in large cattle markets.
Traditionally, ddgs were 20% of the revenue stream for ETOH plants. With this past years margins and the euphoria of building plants anywhere, I think some have deamed it (ddgs) a waste product. That will have to change.
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Question on ethanol mfg
