Making Ammonia From Corn Cobs
Posted: March 30, 2009
Corn cobs will be the primary feedstock for a new plant being located in Iowa that will be producing “BioAmmonia.”
SynGest of San Francisco has announced that the first plant to manufacture anhydrous ammonia fuel and fertilizer from corn biomass will be located in the little burg of Menlo, Iowa – about 45 miles west of Des Moines, with easy access to road and rail transportation.
According to the company, the plant “will use 150,000 tons of locally supplied corn cobs per year to manufacture 50,000 tons of bio-ammonia annually, enough to fertilize 500,000 acres of nearby Iowa farmland under corn.” The company uses a process that burns the cobs at temperatures of up to 1,700 degrees to produce a vapor that is liquefied into ammonia.
So, what they are saying is that they can use corn leftovers to make fertilizer to grow more corn. That could come in pretty handy with fertilizer prices continuing to go up and most ammonia imported from countries like Trinidad and Russia.
According to SynGest CEO Jack Oswald, their SynGest biomass-to-ammonia mini-plant will “empower the farmer and make him impervious to external forces. The SynGest option will let him convert his agricultural waste material into fuel to power the farm and nitrogen fertilizer to replenish the soil.”
The $80 million plant will be located next to the Hawkeye Renewables ethanol plant and reportedly plans to announce a partnership with a major agribusiness firm that will work with farmers on selling their corncobs to the plant.