E³ = Ethanol ~ Efficiency ~ Engineering
Scott Lucas, founder of Lucas E³, has worked on ethanol plant design projects for over fifteen years and is a licensed Professional Engineer in most corn-producing states. After years of watching the industry struggle with antiquated plant designs, he decided to create his own ethanol services company to focus on more modern and efficient methods to produce ethanol.
The resulting designs offer exceptional value to greenfield plant projects, yet can be retrofitted to existing plants to improve yield and profit margin.
One example of Lucas E³ innovation is a unique, patent pending, process that utilizes waste heat recovered from the DDG Dryer exhaust to drive the distillation process, resulting in much greater energy efficiency than traditional designs. This is but one design approach which differentiates Lucas E³ from its competitors.
Lucas E³ is a Controlled Growth company. The designs are innovative, yet we believe the implementation of new designs must be controlled over time to ensure minimum negative impact and maximum positive results. Historic rapid implementation before stabilization is, in the opinion of Lucas E³ engineering, one of the contributors of production inefficiency in existing plants. This has lead us to adopt Strategic Partnerships with proven experience to fuel our growth, which enables project control to be centralized within our governance. This also allows LucasE3 to control internal growth, yet be responsive to our client base while providing full engineering services.
Thinking ahead, Lucas E³ chose a mid-western location with adequate access to a major transportation hub to support clients across the continent as well as international clients around the globe. Our main offices are located in suburbia Kansas City, Missouri.
What We Do
Lucas E³ recognizes the need in the ethanol industry for custom process engineering design and support. For EXISTING ETHANOL PLANTS we offer our E³ Ethanol Plant Performance Evaluation, which allows us to capture the needs and opportunities that would benefit your specific plant with the lowest investment possible. Our evaluation and report provides a detailed description of improvement opportunities for capital investment and allows plant management the freedom to grow their ethanol yield, increase quality, and reduce expenses over time.
For GREENFIELD PLANT PROJECTS, Lucas E³ has developed a unique patent pending distillation process that will incorporate alternative energy sources resulting in a process that is more energy efficient than standard, historical ethanol plant designs. In addition, this new design allows plants to reduce backset ration, thin stillage recycle, from the standard 50% to less than 20% resulting in cleaner fermentations and much improved operational efficiency.