Aventine Renewable Energy, Inc.
The Pekin, Illinois campus is located on the east bank of the Illinois River, approximately 160 miles southwest of Chicago. We have been producing ethanol at this facility since 1981. The facility was originally built in 1899 as a sugar processing facility. Through the years, the facility has undergone numerous upgrades and changes before and since the production of ethanol began in 1981. The Pekin campus has two distinct facilities; one utilizing the wet mill process for producing ethanol and another utilizing the dry mill process for producing ethanol.
The Pekin wet mill is one of the few coal-fired, corn wet mill plants in the U.S., and currently has the capacity to produce approximately 100 million gallons of ethanol annually. The wet mill is the original mill at the Pekin site. The wet mill consumes approximately 38.5 million bushels of corn annually at capacity. Co-products produced by the wet mill include corn gluten feed, corn germ, corn meal, distiller's’ yeast and corn condensed distillers solubles (“CCDS”). In addition, the fermentation process yields carbon dioxide. These co-products are sold for various consumer uses into large commodity markets. Corn gluten feed, corn gluten meal and CCDS are used as animal feed ingredients, corn germ is sold for the extraction of corn oil for human consumption, and carbon dioxide is sold for food-grade use such as beverage carbonation and dry ice.
The Pekin dry mill was added in January 2007 and can produce 57 million gallons of ethanol annually. The fuel source for the Pekin dry mill is natural gas. The co-products produced by the dry mill include both wet and dry distiller’s grains with solubles and carbon dioxide. Distiller’s grain products are used as animal feed. The carbon dioxide is sold for food-grade use such as beverage carbonation and dry ice.
