Earlier this year, we celebrated the many people who touched the Western Plains project in “People Build Ethanol Plants” and have been working closely with their team to realize the full potential of their system in reducing steam, water, and natural gas consumption.  

Ultimately, we consider it possible to reduce natural gas consumption by lowering steam usage to an amazing 6.5 LBS of steam/gallon in DD&E.  This is accomplished by swapping molecular sieves with Whitefox’s membranes, which consume less energy than sieves, and recapturing more energy than previously imagined with the previous generation of technology. Thousands of BTUs of natural gas are then integrated back into the plant and unlocks a new mode of DD&E. As a result, the Whitefox ICE®- XL shepherds in a new generation of DD&E to the North American fuel ethanol sector.

In an environment where clean fuel tax credits, like 45Z, are available to producers, every pound of steam or BTU of energy counts. With this, the ICE XL installation has been in the spotlight, with several potential customers making their trip to Oakley, Kansas throughout the year. Meeting them there each time is the newest addition to Whitefox’s leadership team, Jeff Scharping, who joined in January as our Commercial Director.  

Enabling Industry to Expand Capacity & Meet Demand

While many teams slow down during the holidays, the Whitefox team hasn’t taken their foot off the gas pedal. In early-December, the team reached acceptance on our latest installation at Redfield Energy, a Whitefox ICE® Plus system that was designed to operate alongside their existing molecular sieve infrastructure, taking around 65% of the load from the molecular sieve to the Whitefox membranes, expanding molecular sieve timers, saving energy, and increasing DD&E capacity.

The opportunity to expand DD&E capacity comes at an important time as the industry prepares for substantial growth while momentum builds towards year-round access to E15. Important market signals, including E15 access in California and a strong 2026-2027 RVO proposal published by the US Environmental Protection Agency, indicate an increase in demand for US ethanol plants.  

For Whitefox customers, especially the newest ones to join the movement towards innovative technology adoption, boosting efficiency is the way to meet this demand. In 2025, we commissioned or finished upgrades to Whitefox ICE® systems at Siouxland Energy Cooperative, The Andersons in Denison, IA, Lincolnway Energy, and Glacial Lakes Energy, as well as the first Whitefox ICE® system in Canada that was installed at Alco Energy in Ontario. We also began engineering on our first Whitefox ICE® in South America.  

If you were counting, that is a total of SIX commissioned projects finished in 2025 – a 60% increase in total number of installs in North America– completed in just one year and adding ~105 million gallons per year of capacity.