12/9//98

Contacts:
Larry Johnson, Center for Crops Utilization Research, (515) 294-4365
Barbara McManus, Agriculture Information, (515) 294-0707

GUM ARABIC PRODUCT ADDS VALUE TO IMPROVED ETHANOL PROCESS

AMES, Iowa -- Gum arabic isn't an ingredient consumers instantly recognize, but it is an essential ingredient in citrus-based soft drinks, candy and pharmaceutical products.

The current source for most gum arabic is the Sudan. But the U.S. State Department wants U.S. businesses to find alternate sources because of ties to terrorists.

That could be an incentive for ethanol producers to use a sequential extraction process developed by Larry Johnson, director of the Center for Crops Utilization Research at Iowa State University.

"This is driving a lot of companies to look at ways to produce that component," Johnson said. "I didn't invent any new technologies, it just fit well into a process we already had conceived."

The sequential extraction process Johnson and other researchers developed over the past nine years uses alcohol instead of water to process corn into ethanol.

"When you wet-mill corn to produce ethanol you use water to take the corn apart. With the sequential extraction process, we use the alcohol to take corn apart," Johnson said. "We get 10 percent more alcohol out of the process."

Along with increased production of alcohol, the extraction produces a gum arabic substitute and two high-quality protein products.

The corn proteins produced are higher quality because sulfur dioxide, which is used in wet-milling, isn't used in the sequential extraction process. Sulfur dioxide lowers the quality of protein produced in wet-milling so the protein can be used only in livestock feed. On the other hand, corn protein produced in the extraction process can be used in food production for human consumption.

"When you talk to people in the food industry and you tell them you have a wonderful new corn protein, they don't believe you," Johnson said. "All the corn protein they have seen came from a wet-mill process."

Although the by-products and cleaner extraction process are beneficial, there are drawbacks.

"It takes almost twice as much capital for a sequential extraction mill as it takes for a wet-corn mill," Johnson said. "The other issue is building a market for the new corn. You couldn't make a plant profitable without that market."

Johnson said the demand for gum arabic may help move the project ahead. The next step is to test the process in a small production facility.

"Nobody wants to invest in an unproven technology that takes such a large capital investment," Johnson said. "Somehow we have to demonstrate this is profitable on a smaller scale and prove the concept, then the bigger companies can step in."

Approximately 600 million bushels of corn are converted to ethanol each year, adding at least 30 cents per bushel to corn prices.

"If we can make ethanol production more profitable, then it can expand and give greater return to the corn growers," Johnson said. "My dream is to get every bit of benefit out of the corn that we can get."

The Corn Refiners Association recognized Johnson's work and presented him with a 1998 Outstanding Paper award in Minneapolis, Minn., in September. The work on the sequential extraction process has been funded by the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, the USDA's National Research Initiative and the Governor's Great Lakes Council.

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