Engineer sues former ethanol plant owner
Engineer sues former ethanol plant owner
LIMA, Aug 10, 2011 (The Lima News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A chemical engineer is suing the former owner of an ethanol plant that failed but was resurrected earlier this year by another company. Stephen Pope, of Westerville, filed the lawsuit this month against Greater Ohio Ethanol, seeking $40,053 he said he is owed in severance pay, accumulated vacation pay and business expenses he was not reimbursed.
Pope entered into a contract effective June 22, 2007, to provide engineering services to the ethanol plant. Officials at the plant terminated Pope's employment on July 3, 2008, for no good reason, the lawsuit said. Under terms of Pope's contract, he is owed three months' salary plus four weeks of accumulated and unused vacation pay, the lawsuit said. Last year, a Decatur, Ga., company, M. Chain Inc., filed a lawsuit against Greater Ohio Ethanol saying it was not paid for service. The company was hired in 2005 to provide engineering consulting services, which it did through Feb. 22, 2009, the lawsuit said.
M. Chain was seeking $672,500 but the case was stalled by the ethanol company's bankruptcy proceedings.
In 2009, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the ethanol plant off East Hanthorn Road to Paladin Capital Group after the facility failed to sell at an auction. Paladin paid $5.75 million in cash and promised to pay $15 million in the future. That money was to go to SunTrust, the bank that invested $94 million into the facility.
Paladin planned to spend $25 million to retrofit the plant to make it operational. Guardian Energy Holdings of Janesville, Minn., later purchased a majority stake in the plant in November.
The plant cost $150 million to build. Investors small and large lost millions when the plant failed with SunTrust as the biggest loser.
Greater Ohio filed bankruptcy in October 2008 listing more than 200 creditors. The plant began production in June 2008 and attempted to keep going after the bankruptcy was filed but production stopped in November 2008. Company officials pointed to a design flaw that resulted in increased water usage and increased waste.
The plant reopened earlier this year and has the ability to consume 19 million bushels of corn per year and produce 54 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol each year along with 165,000 tons of dried distillers grain. Guardian has a track record of successful ethanol production plants and has turned around at least one other plant.
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Single, key gene discovery could streamline production of biofuels ...
A team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) have pinpointed the exact, single gene that controls ethanol production capacity in a microorganism. This discovery could be the missing link in developing biomass crops that produce higher concentrations of ethanol at lower costs.
“The Department of Energy relies on the scientific discoveries of its labs and research centers to improve the production of clean energy sources,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “This discovery is an important step in developing biomass crops that could increase yield of ethanol, lower production costs and help reduce our reliance on imported oil.”
The discovery of the gene controlling ethanol production in a microorganism known as Clostridium thermocellum will mean that scientists can now experiment with genetically altering biomass plants to produce more ethanol. Current methods to make ethanol from a type of biomass found in switchgrass and agricultural waste require the addition of expensive enzymes to break down the plant’s barriers that guard energy-rich sugars. Scientists, including those at BESC, have been working to develop a more streamlined approach in which tailor-made microorganisms produce their own enzymes that unlock the plant’s sugars and ferment them into ethanol in a single step. Identifying this gene is a key step towards making the first tailor-made microorganism that produces more ethanol.
Although scientists have studied Clostridium thermocellum for decades, the genetic basis for its ability to tolerate higher concentrations of ethanol had not been determined. Rather than using just one technique or one approach, the research team that made the discovery was able to draw upon multiple experts spanning several scientific disciplines to contribute a broader set of analyses because of the BESC partnership.
BESC is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is one of three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers established by the DOE’s Office of Science in 2007. The centers support multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams pursuing the fundamental scientific breakthroughs needed to make production of cellulosic biofuels, or biofuels from nonfood plant fiber, cost-effective on a national scale.
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