New biogas project to join North Dakota ethanol facility

A project to co-locate a nitrogen fertiliser facility at an ethanol plant has reached the financing stage in North Dakota, US.

The fertiliser plant, to be based alongside the 153 million gallon a year Tharaldson Ethanol in Casselton, will produce anhydrous ammonia, urea ammonium nitrate and urea from biogas made by the ethanol stillage.

The facility will be installed by Agrebon, which is working with Progressive Nutrient Systems and Leading Edge Angel Fund, and is hoped to break ground in the summer.

‘We’re creating nitrogen out of the ethanol plant’s stillage, removing the insolubles and oil through an anaerobic digester to make biogas and returning the water as backset with only the minerals remaining,’ Agrebon co-owner Scott Dyer was quoted as saying.

‘The biogas is then processed on-site into nitrogen, some of which goes back to the ethanol process as yeast nutrients. For every 25 MMgy of ethanol produced, our system is able to produce 11.5 million pounds of nitrogen.’