Joe Van Groll Uses Whey to Make Ethanol @ Less than $1 per Gallon
People who visit Joe Van Groll’s ethanol plant in Stratford, Wis., typically look around and say, “This is it? You don’t have much here.” To which he replies, “Exactly, that’s why I can [make ethanol] so cheap.” Van Groll has experimented with a whey-to-ethanol process part time for more than a decade and full time for the past four years. He believes he can produce ethanol for less than $1 per gallon. The feedstock he uses is whey permeate, the waste product of cheese manufacturing. Although it may sound more complicated than producing ethanol from corn, Van Groll’s philosophy is to avoid waste and keep things simple. The energy integration he is targeting, however, is anything but simple. Besides turning the whey permeate into ethanol, he separates and dries the yeast coproduct for feed; utilizes the waste heat from fermentation and distillation for biodiesel production; and is now demonstrating that the waste heat, water and carbon dioxide can be used to raise oil-bearing algae for biodiesel. He can also incorporate an anaerobic digester that turns wastes into methane to power the process.
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