Finally have a place for my Walters Ethanol plant. Have a lift out bridge to get to it. Will take a few months at least to do. Some early pics. Thanks
i forgot to ask anyone else done a Ethanol Plant. Any tips would be great. I bought 2 Walthers piping kits to run pipes here and their. I see the 3 main parts are The Fermenting area’ Distillation’ and Dehydration area. I assume Covered Hoppers can be used to bring Corn into the plant and Tanker cars which are my favorite cars can be used to export the Ethanol and bring chemicals into the plant’ I see where they use Hydrozene to help get the water out of the Ethanol. Any tips much appreciated. Thanks
I lack tips on building your plant, but I do like what you’ve done so far! I love the idea of expanding across an entrance to reach a single, small industry! You’re really getting full use of you space.
I have a friend who needed staging, so he built a lift out that went though the doorway to a small shelf in the hallway outside the layout room. Just getting the most out of ones space!
Thanks for sharing!
Once the ethanol is extracted, the grain co-product that is left is called distillers grain. It’s used in animal food. I’m not sure how it’s hauled away. It would have to be dried to be haul away in hoppers, if it’s for local use, it can be hauled “wet” in trucks, but it doesn’t have a long “shelf life” before it starts to mold.
Dried, it’s conveyed into 40’ shipping containers, and sent overseas. It’s use is for animal food.
The CN has a facility at their intermodal yard in Chippewa Falls, WI. where they load it for export.
Mike.
Jim,
The corn is usually trucked in. The plants are put in the heart of corn production areas.
The output of the plant is ethanol shipped in large 33,000 gallon tank cars, and DDG(distillers dried grain) shipped in large 4 bay covered hoppers. The DDG may also be trucked out to local feed lots.
Inbound rail shipments may be a tank car of gasoline to dilute the near 200 proof ethanol so they do not need a fed tax stamp for brewing ‘shine’.
Jim
Mine is packed into a small area 2 foot wide. Two ethanol loading racks. A storage track and a grain unloading track. The walthers duel unloading kit is used there. The site can handle an 8 car ethanol train. Plus buffers. 10 cars if two covered hoppers are on it. Mostly the covered hoppers come in on a seperate run
Hello All,
My first thought is how much room do you have?
Thank you for the photos.
It appears that you have creatively filled a small space.
My 4’x8’ freelance pike is a coal branch loop set in the late '70’s to mid '80’s. It is a walk around, table-top pike with wireless DCC control.
Yes, the main drags in and out of the facility are coal hoppers.
But, like any industry, there are many other necessities that are required to keep the plant in running order.
In the center of my pike there is enough room to include a wye, a historic spiral trestle (helix), several sidings and an elevated loading siding (served by a 3% grade and the spiral trestle), along with various service and maintenance facilities for the mine, modern diesels and the power plant, and the Olde Tyme steam excursion train (converted to burn oil- -ironic at a coal mine).
•Flatcars- -To carry large machinery that is needed to keep the plant operating.
These loads can be anything from uncovered items, covered items, loads of piping and vehicles.
Some of these could be depressed center flats that carry some of the oversized loads; spools of conveyor belt material, transformers, ventilation fans, etc.
•Boxcars- -Use to haul smaller pieces of machinery along with other miscellaneous freight.
•Combine Car or Doodle Bug- -On my pike, because of the remote location of the mine, the workers need a way to get to and from the facility.
There are no roads into the complex so all the staff; from the miners to the power plant operators and all other workers have to commute by train.
•Gondola Cars- -These might make an appearance from time to time to haul scrap or old machinery.
•Schnable- -Even this Goliath could make an occasional visit with it’s retort load for the distilllation columns.
•A “Critter” or other small switching locomotive- -I personally love these little gia
JJ, I must be missing something. [%-)] What does all of the things you mention in your post have to do with the OP’ ethanol plant?
Just wondering…
Mike.
Hello All,
I believed that the OP was asking about different types of rolling stock, not the actual construction of the facility.
All of the types of rolling stock I listed could be involved with the maintenance and production of any industry.
Ethanol production included.
I noted my pike as an example of the possibilities.
Hope this helps.
Thanks all I was asking about the plant itself’ piping’ buildings’ holding tanks ect and also the type of rolling stock that would be used’ Thanks JJ for your time on all the type of cars that could be used. I used to work as a sub contract painter at a Dow Chemical plant was called Rohm Hass then. Their was always welders every where changing things’ lots of cranes and pipes. As one suggested most Ethanol Plants or in the corn belt and trucks would be used to brings the corn in. I live in southern IN. and corn is every where. No Ethanol plants here’ most of the corn goes to the big Feed Mill close by and to all the chicken house’s for the Tyson Plant here’ also we have 2 large Pop Corn plants ’ Cousin Wille’s and Ramsey Popcorn. My area is 32in deep by 46 in. I will post some updates pic soon ’ Thanks
A while back, I ran across a video depicting a professionally-produced HO scale ethanol plant, being exhibited at a farm show, by the ethanol trade association Growth Energy together with farm machinery manufacturer New Holland. G/E VP Kelly Manning had the model produced; he reports that it took about 500 hours, including field research visits to several ethanol plants to ensure authenticity.
Unfortunately, the video doesn’t spend quite enough time viewing the model, but you can clearly see the extensive detailing. I’ve tried to find other presentations of this model on the internet, but without success. The model’s present location is unclear. In the video, Kelly Manning indicates an intent to produce additional versions of the model, for display at farm shows, museums, and similar venues. Whether that’s happened or not is unclear.
In any event, the video is well-worth watching, several times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IEjnp15ne0#action=share
// Michael
Thanks Michael that is one fine Model’ Gave me some ideas. Now I will never have that much detail ’ I only have so much space. But I did see where the pipes go into the Evaporators’ I had no clue on that. I googled Ethanol and saw many pic but most were over head shots hard to tell much. Thanks so much for that. I will watch it many times.
Up date pic. Been placing pipes here and their and other items. Do I know what is the proper way to pipe a Ethanol plant. No just more for looks. I am the opposite of a Rivet Counter so that should tell you something. But the kids think it looks great. Thanks and Happy Memorial weekend. 
Here is the Red Trail Energy plant in Richardton, ND.
If you google “Richardton, ND” you will get a view of our ‘house’ right there on the first page.
The BNSF mane lion runs just to the north of the plant, and a little north of that is “Old Higyway 10”
The long white strips that you see is extra corn that didn’t fit into the three elevator towers.
Cor arrives by rail and by road. Sometimes we can see twenty or more trucks waiting to go in. They must be weighed (so you need a scale), and there is an automatic snout that will reach deep into the load and extract samples for assay.
As built the plant was to be fired by local lignite coal brought in by truck from a near-by mine. Engineer did not do his sums right, and the lignite coal did not burn properly, so they switched to bituminus coal brought in by rail. You can still see the coal pile half way down the track. It was too much work and labor to use coal this way, and with the price of local gas, they changed to gas firing. We have not seen coal cars in years.
You can see the various fermentation tanks to the west of the processing building. These tanks are partially inside of the building. The valves and pumps and whatever are inside of the building, workers need not go out doors in the dead of winter.
Gasoline is brought into the facility in smalle tank cars than what they ship the ethanol in. The gasoline is used to cut the ethanol from 100% to 85%. At 100% the product would come under the liquer authority and would have to be sold in liter bottles with a tax stamp on it.Corn squeezins’ you know.
The big square buiilding holds the driers. The biggest things ever to cross North Dakota roads and that includes all of the oil field business. The driers were put in place and then the building was built around them.
Product that is dried only in the first d
I toured an ethanol plant in Nebraska (unfortunately photos inside the plant were forbidden but we could take all we wanted outside) and the thing that struck me at the time was how all the piping (and there is a lot of piping, just a maze of pipes) was color coded in bright primary colors.
There was a long string of trucks waiting to dump their corn – each lot had to be tested before they were allowed to dump so there was a special receiving area. I do not know if they were testing for moisture content or purity or both. The truck was weighed twice - full then empty.
The dry distiller’s grain was shipped out in covered hoppers and perhaps also trucks. The wet distiller’s grain was for purely local use and shipped out in trucks. I have to think mostly it was dried.
There are many steps in the process. The corn is ground down in a very early stage. Ethanol plants are considerable users of water. An early stage looked almost like orange paint it was so opaque - not like a thin juice in other words. I think that might have been before initial fermentation. But you would not see this level of detail from the outside. I do think there are two stages of fermentation. The “alcohol” odor at the last stage and strong and somewhat pleasant - and that is why they add gasoline to “denature” it.
Jeff Wilson goes into much detail in his book about Grain.
Dave Nelson
Lion, and Dave, that is a whole lotta’ great info! You could build a switching lay out centered around a big ethanol plant, and have a very busy lay out.
Excellent info. It still amazes me how they have to cut it or else it’s corn squeezin’s [(-D]
So, when you see a unit train of ethanol, is it already mixed with the gas?
I can never get a good look at the placarding. I’ll have to do a little searching.
Mike.
YES! They couold never affor the booze taxs on all of that stuff.
I kind of figured, as what placarding I did catch a glimpse of appeared to be the same as used for gas.
Just think if it wasn’t cut, you might see a return of the days of train robbery! [(-D]
I just did another fly-over of your town, Lion, coutesy of Google Satallite.
That must be the frac sand facility just a little SW. between Hyw 8 and the I-94.
I really like those majestic towers on each side of your front door.
Mike.
Lion has suddenly recaptured my interest in modeling an ethonal plant (especially with his reference to the BNSF “mane lion” in his picture). I have a whole bunch of currently useless GATX tanktrain cars. Wonder if those would work prototypically, either as single units or a connected set of cars?
My sentiments exactly!
My layout features a multi-use generic plant called Western Grain and Sugar that handles both wet- and dry products. Depending on what kind of tank cars get dispatched to the plant, the wet product could be ethanol, or just as easily be high fructose corn syrup, or soybean oil, or even beer. Doesn’t really matter. And depending on what kind of hoppers or gondolas arrive, the raw material and/or dry product could be beets, beans, or barley. Or corn.
Looking good Jim.
Robert