Sunrise Energy Cooperative

Located in Blairstown, Iowa, USA, Sunrise Energy began start-up and production in 1999. The plant is designed to produce approximately 55,000 liters per day of ASTM motor fuel grade ethanol from an integrated dry-milling ethanol plant and cattle feedlot.

The plant includes mash preparation, cooking liquefaction, simultaneous yeast propagation, saccharification and fermentation, distillation, molecular sieve dehydration, and thin stillage evaporation. The facility is designed to process No. 2 yellow dent corn as well as high moisture (28 wt%) ensiled corn, which reduces the feedstock cost for the facility.

The cattle feedlot consumes the concentrated thin stillage syrup and wet cake from the plant as a major component of the cattle feed ration. This model of collocating the ethanol plant with the cattle feedlot allowed the plant to be built without the capital investment and long term operating cost of a DDGS dryer.

KATZEN provided technology, process design, equipment design and specifications, detail design, start-up services and employee training.