During the last few years it has become clear that the US needs to increase its capability of producing alternate fuel supplies. However, until recently there have not been enough monetary incentives to warrant the investments required to develop the supplies required. With the cost of petroleum reaching an all-new high and the banning of MTBE, suddenly the investments are there. For companies that have been around a "long" time (over 5 years), there will be a whole new group of competitors and these long-time companies will be pushed to streamline operations.

In the past, most of the ethanol producing refineries have been relatively small, in comparison to oil refineries, and have been run by local CO-OP’s whose main concern was having a small local refinery to handle the local farmers only. Efficiency wasn’t as much a concern as was keeping the cost down. This has led to some interesting mixes of software and hardware.

Aventine REI recently came to General Atomics Electronic Systems Inc. (GA-ESI) to help them overcome some of these interesting mixes. One of the first problems was getting the "corn dump" trucks in and out of the terminal in a shorter time period. GA-ESI developed the Hardi-Touch reader to help with this problem (see example screen below). The Hardi-Touch has an on board computer that allows it to download all necessary information from the TMS3000 directly to the loading bay for faster verification and printing of all loading materials. The Corn Dump also required special screens to help the driver identify whom he is, the CO-OP he is delivering for and which farm the product is from so a batch number can be assigned. Today the corn dump area can unload up to 30 trucks an hour (one every two minutes) per scale. This includes checking in, dropping the product and receiving all paperwork.

Another problem Aventine had was interfacing the lab analysis system. The TMS3000 Terminal Automation System is easy to use and has all the necessary tools to allow trained users to modify any TMS3000 screen. This allowed Aventine personnel to make a special interface on the TMS3000 to their lab analysis system for real time entry and monitoring of the grade of the corn. This information can be fed directly to their ERP system for billing purposes.

The TMS3000 Terminal Automation System also controls Aventine’s ethanol and co-products (byproducts such as syrup and corn mash) truck and rail car loading via scale and/or meter. The TMS3000 verifies and preauthorizes all loading, controls all aspects of the loading procedure and uploads the final load data to the ERP system for billing and a time saving and efficient operation.

With more and more companies joining the Bio-products producing market, the market will become a lot more competitive and the companies that will survive will be the ones that can run their operations efficiently.