A Shell Rock ethanol plant is one of the first in Iowa to use a Cedar Rapids-developed technology to make a high-protein animal feed ingredient, reportsThe Gazette.
Flint Hills Resources, a fuel and chemical company based in Wichita, KS, expanded its Shell Rock plant, brought in new equipment — including an eight-story dryer — and hired more employees for theMaximized Stillage Co-products, or MSC,process.
That technology, developed byFluid Quip Technologiesof Cedar Rapids, extracts protein from the whole stillage that remains after ethanol processing and makes a 50% protein feed for pets, fish, dairy cows, poultry and swine.
“We’re still consuming and generally buying the same amount of corn,” Mark Murphy, Flint Hills Resources general manager of global marketing and trading, toldThe Gazette.
“We’ve really just repurposed the corn kernel. We’re still producing the same amount of ethanol and feed, just in two different products.”