Patent ID: 8247202

Claim:
A method for producing ethanol at an ethanol manufacturing facility that receives, as feed materials, corn and corn cobs characterized by having previously been subjected to processing that has been performed upstream of the ethanol manufacturing facility and that has comprised: providing a plurality of farm fields that supply corn and cobs as feed materials to the ethanol manufacturing facility; at each of said farm fields, employing harvesting equipment to pick corn plant materials including ear corn comprising corn and corn cobs as components; separating said ear corn components after said picking step; delivering corn plant material comprising cobs, from a plurality of farm fields, to a location that is downstream of said farm fields and remote from the farms where the cobs are harvested; said upstream processing including at least one of the following expedients (a)-(c), (a) delivering said corn plant material comprising cobs to said downstream location without consuming cobs to dry ear corn there, (b) performing said upstream processing without consuming cobs to dry concurrently corn and cobs that are received at an ethanol manufacturing facility, and (c) performing said upstream processing without consuming corn, unfit for seed, to dry cobs that are received at an ethanol manufacturing facility; and wherein said method comprises: providing, at said location, an ethanol manufacturing facility that makes ethanol from corn and that is remote from the farms that supply said ethanol manufacturing facility with feed materials; receiving, at said ethanol manufacturing facility, from a plurality of farm fields, feed materials comprising corn and cobs characterized by having undergone said previous upstream processing; the proportion of cobs in the feed materials being greater than the proportion therein of stover ingredients other than cobs; the ratio of cobs to said other stover ingredients, in the feed materials, being greater than the ratio of cobs to said other stover ingredients in the corn plant; the ratio of cobs to corn in the feed materials being greater than the ratio of stover ingredients, other than cobs, to corn in said feed materials; chemically processing a corn plant ingredient into ethanol; using heat in said processing; and employing corn plant material comprising cobs as a source of fuel for the heat used in said processing; the proportion of cobs, in the corn plant material employed as said source of fuel, being (a) greater than the proportion of cobs in the stover of the corn plant and (b) greater than the proportion of stover ingredients other than cobs in the material employed as said source of fuel.