Fermentation and costs of fuel ethanol from corn with Quick-Germ process.

The Quick-Germ process developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a way to obtain corn oil, but with lower capital costs than the traditional wet-milling process. Quick-Germ has the potential to increase the coproduct credits and profitability of the existing dry-grind fuel ethanol process, but the fermentability of the corn remaining after oil recovery has not been tested. Therefore, a series of pilot scale (50 L) fermentations was carefully controlled and monitored with unique methods for standard inoculation and automatic sampling. It was found that the concentration of suspended solids was significantly reduced in the Quick-Germ fermentations. When compared at the same concentration of fermentable sugars, the fermentation rate and yield were not statistically different from controls. When Quick-Germ was integrated into a state-of-the-art dry-grind fuel ethanol process, computer simulation and cost models indicated savings of approx $0.01/L of ethanol ($0.04/gal) with the Quick-Germ process. Additional savings associated with the lower suspended solids could not be quantified and were not included. However, the savings are sensitive to the price of corn oil.

Distribution of fumonisins in food and feed products prepared from contaminated corn.

The fate and distribution of the fumonisins B1 (FB1) and B2 (FB2) were determined in products obtained from naturally contaminated corn used for ethanol fermentation and wet milling operations. Fumonisins are stable to the conditions used in ethanol fermentations and tend to concentrate in the distillers dried grain, a fraction generally used for animal feed. No toxin was found in the ethanol. Starch from wet milling of corn, naturally contaminated at 13.9 micrograms fumonisin B1/g, was free of detectable toxin. The other fractions contained fumonisins at the following levels: gluten (5.1-5.8 micrograms FB1/g, 4.7-4.9 micrograms FB2/g); fiber (2.7-5.7 micrograms FB1/g, 2.1-3.1 micrograms FB2/g); and germ (1.3-3.1 micrograms FB1/g, 0.7-1.6 micrograms FB2/g). The steep water and process water contained 22% of the recoverable fumonisins. A combination of analytical methodologies was required to determine fumonisins in the different products from the wet milling process.