Pacific Ethanol Inc.

Today I went on a field trip with my soils class to the ribbon cutting ceremony at Pacific Ethanol, Inc. in Burley, ID. I ended up sitting on the front row in front of the stage, so I was lucky enough to snap a few shots with my camera phone. Honestly, it was a very interesting experience. Something interesting I learned was that the making of Ethanol isn't actually diminishing the food supply. Apparently the corn used to make Ethanol at this particular plant would regularly be used as cattle feed. In the production of Ethanol the process only extracts the starch in the corn; then everything else including nutrients and proteins are made into a pulp that the Ethanol company will sell as cattle feed. The advantage to this pulp is that it's actually a more nutritious for the cows than straight corn. COOL!



Here is Idaho's Governor, Butch Otter welcoming the plant to Magic Valley. He seemed like a pretty decent guy!



The Ribbon Cutting ceremony . . .



And it's official!



Here's a view from the top. Crazy thing about it is that the entire plant can be run by four people at a time. There are only 36 people on the payroll, and this plant will produce 60 million gallons of Ethanol a year. It's was an awesome field trip--the only downside? It stank like rotting corn and alcohol. Imagine that!