Where is ethanol produced in the us

Ethanol, Dittrich believed, could help. And more than 20 years later, it did, raising corn prices nearly a dollar per bushel on average. Now, roughly 40 percent of the U. Facing negative margins, manufacturers have warned of more plant closures and reduced run rates. Today, nearly every gallon of gas sold in the United States contains at least percent ethanol. But even after Trump approved year-round sales in , it was only offered in a small number of service stations.

Less debatable were the impact of retaliatory trade tariffs imposed in by China, which was once a major importer of U. Combine all these factors with a global pandemic, which has drastically curtailed travel and therefore demand for gasoline, and an oil price war between Saudia Arabia and Russia, which continues driving the oil supply up and prices down, and the pressure only has mounted. In fact, it may be too much for some ethanol manufacturers— if not the industry itself — to handle, says Doyle of Al-Corn Clean Fuel.

The industry has been operating at a break-even to negative level for quite a while. Some manufacturers have begun converting their operations to create alcohol for hand sanitizer, which is currently in low supply in hospitals and nursing homes across the country.

But the conversion is hardly seamless. Although fuel ethanol production capacity increased year over year as of January , fuel ethanol production has declined more recently. Fuel ethanol production reached a low of 0. EIA forecasts that fuel ethanol production will average 0. To meet the increased demand for hand sanitizers as a result of COVID concerns, some fuel ethanol and beverage ethanol plants are now producing industrial alcohol.

The ethanol data reported to EIA on Form EIA, Monthly Oxygenates Report , are for fuel ethanol and only include barrels intended for motor fuel applications, such as blending to produce gasoline. Any ethanol intended for non-fuel use, such as to produce hand sanitizers, is not reported to EIA. The process is shorter for starch- or sugar-based feedstocks than with cellulosic feedstocks. Most ethanol in the United States is produced from starch-based crops by dry- or wet-mill processing.

Dry-milling is a process that grinds corn into flour and ferments it into ethanol with co-products of distillers grains and carbon dioxide.

Wet-mill plants primarily produce corn sweeteners, along with ethanol and several other co-products such as corn oil and starch. Wet mills separate starch, protein, and fiber in corn prior to processing these components into products, such as ethanol.

Making ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks—such as grass, wood, and crop residues—is a more involved process than using starch-based crops. There are two primary pathways to produce cellulosic ethanol: biochemical and thermochemical.

The biochemical process involves a pretreatment to release hemicellulose sugars followed by hydrolysis to break cellulose into sugars. Sugars are fermented into ethanol and lignin is recovered and used to produce energy to power the process. The thermochemical conversion process involves adding heat and chemicals to a biomass feedstock to produce syngas, which is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.