Dr. Vijay Singh to Focus on Dry Grind Processing at CUTC (2-10-06)

Dr. Vijay Singh of the University of Illinois will give a glimpse into the future of dry grind processing at the 2006 Corn Utilization Technology Conference (CUTC), sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), as he chairs a session dry grind processing. The conference will be held June 5-7 in Dallas.

“Dr. Singh is one of the foremost contributors to researching and advancing dry grind processing,” said Dr. Richard Glass, NCGA vice president of research and business development. “His presentation will cover the current state of the art of dry grind processing.”

Dry grind processing is low-cost corn processing designed to optimize the ethanol that can be produced from corn. Currently, the dry grind platform produces only ethanol and dried distillers grains, which is an animal feed. Dr. Singh’s research is designed to optimize dry grind processing not only for ethanol production, but production of higher-value products.

Singh said dry grind processing is a hot industry, so much so that he is expanding his program at CUTC to include two back-to-back sessions that will be held on Tuesday, June 6, from 8:30 to 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to noon.

“The corn industry is the fastest-growing commodity industry in the world,” said Singh. “Seed companies are producing new hybrids, developing specific types of corn for dry grind processing. We’re covering topics on new technologies in dry grind processing and how we can do more value-added products.”

Singh has schedule eight speakers for his program. Four will speak at each one.

In the first session, Kelly Davis of Chippewa Valley Ethanol and Kris Kor of Corn Plus Ethanol will discuss various ethanol processing technologies. James Graeber of Syngenta will talk about enzymes development. Rob Broin of Broin & Associates, will speak about the designing and building of ethanol plants, as well as B-Frac and BPX technologies.

In the second session, Bruce Strohm of Genecor and Kevin Wenger of Novozymes will give presentations on enzymes and their effect on dry grind processing. Jeffery Robert of Delta-T will discuss his company’s role as ethanol plant designers. Kevin Hicks of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service will talk about production technologies.

“The main idea is to present what’s going on in the dry-grind processing world, what new things are happening,” Singh said. “This industry is growing at tremendous pace.”

“Because of the interest in dry grind processing, we’ve made Dr. Singh’s session a two-part session covering an entire morning of CUTC,” said Glass. “His session will provide a range of topics from Broin’s BPX to processing economics of dry grind processing to corn fractionation. In addition, there will be new information on enzymes and technology to extract more energy from DDGS.”

CUTC has been expanded this year to include wet milling, dry grind processing, value-added technologies and new uses for dried distillers grains with solubles.

In two weeks, NCGA will talk with Dr. Gary Allen of the University of Missouri, who will chair the session “Nutritional Aspects of Foodstuffs from Corn Processing.”

For information on CUTC’s agenda and registration materials, please visit www.corntechconf.org.