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Abengoa Starch & Cellulosic Ethanol Plant

Estimator for a FEL2 ± 20% total installed cost estimate for a greenfield ethanol plant. Plant design was a combination of a 120 million gallon per year corn or milo starch to ethanol plant with a 10 million gallon per year biomass to ethanol demonstration plant. Coordinated development of equipment, line, and valve lists and development of material take-offs. Developed conceptual designs of structures for structural material take-offs. Estimated material quantities and costs and assembled overall cost estimate.

Unit operations: Starch liquefaction, Saccharification, Cellulose hydrolysis, Fermentation, Distillation, Ethanol drying (dehydration), Stillage evaporation, Grain grinding, Biomass handling and pretreatment, Truck unloading and loading
Products: Fuel ethanol (grain and cellulosic), Distillers grains (animal feed)
Company: Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies, Inc.
Location: Hugoton, Kansas

Abengoa evaluated a number of alternative designs for their Hugoton, Kansas ethanol plant. The particular design that I worked on was while I was a Project Engineer with Middough Inc. in their Chicago office. We worked with the Middough St. Louis office to develop a cost estimate for the plant that was, at the time, to be a combination of a typical 120 million gallon per year grain ethanol plant and a smaller 10 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant.

Starting with a redlined set of drawings from an existing Abengoa plant and their preliminary cellulosic demonstration plant design, the Middough team compiled equipment, line and valve lists, estimated line lengths, and developed conceptual structure designs for the structural materials takeoffs. We combined these with budgetary equipment prices and installation cost estimates to provide Abengoa with a total installed cost estimate for the new plant.