Coal Creek Drying and Storage nearly ready
By Michael Johnson, Editor
A limited liability company formed by Norfarms, Great River Energy and Headwaters, Inc. is nearing completion on another massive structure housed near the Blue Flint Ethanol plant as well as the Coal Creek Power Plant. It’s called Coal Creek Drying and Storage and it’s just one more step in making the ethanol plant more independent. Previously corn would come in off the fields and the cutoff would be corn over 17 percent moisture content. Blue Flint Ethanol commodity manager Dave Spickler said ideally that corn should be at 14.5 percent moisture or less to go through the grinding process. The grinding of the corn is part of the process in breaking down the sugars and starches in the corn to pull out the 200-proof alcohol formed after fermentation. The structures rising up now include grain bins for 600,000 bushels of dry storage, 100,000 bushels of wet storage and one 4,000 bushel-per-hour dryer, which is run by natural gas. The general contractor on the project is Gateway of Fargo. They began construction on the project in early July and plan to complete it by Oct. 15 when corn harvest should be underway.
