Planned Pennsylvania Ethanol Plant "Going Greener" With Switch To Corn

September 17, 2008 12:32 p.m. EST

Lancaster, PA (AHN) - A $120 million ethanol plant planned for construction in Pennsylvania on the banks of the Susquehanna River might use barley instead of corn.

Lancaster Biofuels officials initially planned to use 20 million bushels of corn annually to produce 60 million gallons of ethanol in the plant planned for construction in Conoy Township. But the nation is already producing two-thirds of the 15 billion gallons of ethanol fuel that can be produced from corn.

The government capped the amount of corn that could be diverted from food to fuel in an effort to not allow it to negatively impact food supplies and prices, although bio-fuels already have.

Seth Obetz, who helped form Lancaster Biofuels and is vice chairman of the Manheim oil firm Worley & Obetz, explained the benefits of using barley.

He told Lancasteronline that barley, a winter cereal grain crop, can be grown on about 180,000 acres in 10 nearby counties and can be double-cropped with food crops such as soybeans. In addition to producing ethanol from the barley, the plant would also produce a barley protein meal that would be sold as high-quality animal feed.

There would be benefits to the environment as well.

One benefit would be converting the barley hulls to fuel pellets to use in the ethanol plant or sell as green energy fuel in domestic and export markets, Obetz said.

Another would be come from the barley crop as it grew.

"It holds back the soil and reduces the nitrogen sediment and phosphorus runoff," Obetz told Lancasteronline.

Another benefit would be giving area farmers additional income from growing barley as a winter crop.