David Grewell flipped on the augers that carry corn from a truck to a biorefinery.
Then, with a few more clicks of his computer mouse, he turned on the pumps that send grain all the way through an ethanol plant, from storage to hammer mill to slurry tanks to jet cooker to liquefaction, fermentation, distillation, water separation, and ultimately to ethanol storage.
Don’t forget the centrifuges, evaporators, and driers that recover distillers grains for livestock feed.
All of this happened in a small office on the north side of the Food Sciences Building and the Center for Crops Utilization Research at Iowa State University. Grewell, an associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, calls his virtual control room “Nintendo for biofuel nerds.”
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