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Bio-ethanol is also called ethyl alcohol. Sometimes simply described as “alcohol” or “ethanol”.

Ethanol has many applications. It is an important and often indispensable building block in various sectors such as chemistry, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and those of alcoholic beverages.

Our bio-ethanol is mainly used to mix with petrol. This makes the fuel more environmentally friendly. In fact, bio-ethanol reduces CO₂ emissions from fuel. At the filling station, the label at the pump and the petrol nozzle show how much ethanol can be contained in the petrol: up to 5% per volume also known as E5 or up to 10% per volume better known as E10. In the Netherlands most of the petrol offered is E10 better known as 95E10.

AER produces around 650 million litres of ethanol annually.

Thanks to our co-generation unit we produce electricity and steam with high energy efficiency; 30% better than if electricity and steam were generated separately.

The amount of steam corresponds exactly to the needs of our refinery. About half of the excess electricity production goes to the public electricity grid. That amount of electricity is enough to supply about 75,000 households.

The corn kernel is used optimally. At AER, we currently manufacture 3 products from this grain: bio-ethanol, animal feed and CO₂. The next step is to also make corn oil.

But we don’t stop there. We are constantly looking for ways in which Alco can innovate both in raw material choice and products.

The common perception is that an ethanol plant only uses the raw materials for the production of ethanol. In some cases this is true, for example ethanol from waste or residual flows, but this is not the case for the vast majority of European biorefineries.

The main by-product, Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles, is in fact concentrated protein. Approximately 3 times the protein content of the processed grain. The DDGS also contains a considerable amount of valuable yeast protein. It is sold to the animal feed industry (dairy and beef cattle, pigs and poultry) in the form of flour or pellets.

Humans and animals need protein, more than sugars. In Europe, we import a great deal of protein in the form of soya meal. This comes mainly from North and South America. This is often genetically modified animal feed. The beauty of our DDGS is that it is made from European grain and is not genetically modified. In this way, we can kill two birds with one stone.

The trade name of our feed ingredient is DDGS Proticorn.

Annually, AER produces around 450,000 tons of protein-rich animal feed.

Alco Energy Rotterdam is one of the few European ethanol plants that captures and re-uses CO₂. This process of capture and re-use is also known as Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU).

We produce this CO₂ during the fermentation process and call it biogenic or green CO₂.

On the AER site there is an installation owned and managed by the companies Linde and OCAP purifying and compressing this CO₂. This installation has been operational on a continuous basis since the summer of 2016 and processes up to 400,000 tonnes of green CO₂ annually.

The CO₂ goes by pipeline to the Westland where it is used in the horticultural sector. In the greenhouses the fossil CO₂ extracted from natural gas is replaced by our green CO₂. This CO₂ is absorbed by the tomatoes and peppers stimulating the growth process. And in this way the circle is complete. A good example of circular economy.

Using our CO₂ in an environmentally friendly way also reduces the CO₂ footprint of our bioethanol. Thanks to this capture and re-use of CO₂, Alco Energy Rotterdam is one of the European bioethanol producers with greenhouse gas emissions far below the EU average.