Easy Automation, Inc.
Welcome, Minnesota
Biofuels
$45,000 Grant
2007
In rural energy, manufacturers are constantly looking for innovative approaches.
With that in mind, Easy Automation, an experienced manufacturer of feed and automated storage systems, is working to develop a modular ethanol plant that will allow farmers to produce ethanol from grain – all operated by a computer system similar to a feed mill or grain dryer.
To compete with the economies of scale realized by large ethanol plants, Easy Automation produces a modular system benefiting from cost savings of mass production.
Easy Automation hopes its modular, skid-mounted system can produce ethanol economically at a smaller scale to overcome the transport costs of biomass. It asserts that the technology can also convert cellulose to ethanol.
Easy Automation started with a REAP grant to help convert the 100 kW natural gas genset at its Emmetsburg, Iowa manufacturing plant to an ethanol powered system. “We wanted a way to make renewable energy using renewable energy,” said Jayden Grupe, Operations Manager for the company. The generator serves nearly the entire electrical load for the plant.
Looking forward, Grupe believes that its modular system will be able to incorporate the latest in ethanol technology. “We believe our system will be able to readily produce cellulosic ethanol,” he said.
Easy Automation is hopeful that its customers will also be able to use REAP funding to purchase its modular ethanol production facilities. The advantage of the company’s system is in its “plug and play” capability, said Grupe.
The prefabricated system allows a self-contained, fully automatic ethanol production system to be delivered to a farm in trucks
and assembled quickly. Combining units allows for scale-up. All that’s left is to turn the grain into fuel for the farm.