Build
STARTING WITH
STEEL Most ethanol plant upgrades require the installation of new tanks or vessels. The carbon and stainless steel they’re made from is super expensive right now, but fabricators are still getting orders. By Tom Bryan
While record-high steel prices and a strained supply chain are causing unprecedented challenges throughout manufacturing, few U.S. ethanol producers are deferring projects because of it. In fact,
despite higher costs and longer lead times for products made from flat, sheet and coiled steel, project activity is expected to rise in 2022 with ethanol output at its pre-pandemic level. Ethanol plants are, of course, almost entirely made of steel—from their process machinery and piping to their metal buildings and structural supports—but the heavy-gauge steel that is “burned, beveled and rolled” to make tanks, vessels and columns is perhaps their most outward-facing characteristic. Ethanol Producer Magazine visited with two Midwest fabricators in late 2021, one that builds large tanks in pieces and assembles them on site, and another that delivers custom-manufactured shell and tube condensers. While the two companies make quite different products, both are dependent on steel and expect robust activity in 2022 despite the lingering high-cost environment. Ethanol’s ‘Echo-Boom’ With a focus on field-erected tanks, Brown Tank LLC has been fabricating carbon and stainless steel storage and process tanks for U.S. ethanol producers for more than two de-
cades. From massive 2-million-gallon ethanol storage tanks to large process tanks—fermenters, beer wells, liquefaction tanks and more— the St. Paul, Minnesota-based company is a full-service tank builder that not only understands the ethanol industry but supports it. “We’ve always been, and remain ready to serve ethanol plants,” says Scott Kraker, professional engineer and longtime sales manager at Brown Tank. “We’ve been working with producers since the early days, and through every stage of growth and evolution.” With its experienced team of engineers, technicians and in-the-field fabrication personnel, Brown Tank is a one-stop shop that translates the design of a collaborating process engineer or EPC to construction-ready tank components. “Our professional engineering team produces the structural design plans for use in fabrication of the raw materials for the field construction of the tank on site,” Kraker says. In a different realm of the steel vessel business, Decatur, Illinois-based Mason Manufacturing custom builds shell and tube evaporators for ethanol producers. Unlike the large tanks that Brown fabricates, however, Mason’s process vessels are entirely built in its shop and shipped out ready for installation. “That’s a large portion of our business, maybe twothirds of our volume,” says Doug Cox, vice president and engineering manager at Mason. “We also build pressure vessels—reactors and
14 | ETHANOL PRODUCER MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2021
columns—and, to a lesser extent, tanks. But our bread-and-butter is shell and tube heat exchangers.” For years, Mason has been providing the ethanol industry with 190-proof condensers, sieve vaporizers, cook water heaters and CIP heaters made with both carbon and stainless steel (304 and 316). “We were able to get in on the ground floor with the ethanol industry’s top EPCs early, so we’re in a lot of ethanol plants throughout the Corn Belt,” Cox says. “Having that decades-long presence has been good for us because people see our units in the plant. They’ve been in operation now for 10, 15, 20 years—with Mason Manufacturing nameplates on them—so if they need replace-
