EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – Located in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in California, the famed Silicon Valley is known as the global center for high technology and innovation. In the Midwest, an expected investment of at least $17 million is going toward establishing an area of southern Illinois as a technological “Sili-Corn Valley,” according to one Illinois lawmaker.

This is due to the state of Illinois providing $15 million and the Illinois Corn Marketing Board (ICMB) chipping in an additional $2 million toward a major expansion of the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (SIUE).

“Illinois is home to cutting-edge institutions, and we’re building our state’s reputation as a world-class leader in research by expanding the NCERC at SIUE,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a prepared statement. “This expansion will help turn Illinois crops into new products and create more opportunities and good-paying jobs in southwestern Illinois.” 

The investment is expected to provide opportunities for new corn bioproducts to achieve scale-up toward commercialization, according to Illinois Corn Growers Association (ICGA) Executive Director Rod Weinzierl. “An expansion in this facility will allow the testing and trials required for new corn products to scale in Illinois, building both future markets for Illinois corn and creating jobs in the agriculture and processing sectors for our state,” said Weinzierl, while also noting that the investment could help improve commodity prices for the next generation of Illinois corn farmers.

In addition to the state and private investment in NCERC, Illinois Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-13th district) said she has requested funds from the federal government for the project as a part of her effort to establish a “Sili-Corn Valley” in her west-central Illinois district. “I’m proud to continue supporting NCERC back in Washington, as co-chair of the Biofuels Congress. This year, I submitted an additional federal funding request that will hopefully boost this already robust investment. Ultimately, this funding will help propel NCERC forward and allow them to expand on the groundbreaking work they are doing right in our district,” Budzinski said. She represents more than 740,000 constituents in her district, which stretches from Champaign-Urbana and Decatur down to Springfield and parts of the St. Louis Metro East.

The expansion will include new, explosion-proof Biosafety Level 2 work areas and add two additional bioreactors to the facility. “The bioreactor availability creates a major opportunity for commercialization of new bioproducts, as bioreactors are currently a limiting factor for many companies with proof of concept,” Illinois Corn stated. In addition, the expanded facility will include a Workforce Training and Experiential Learning Center to prepare students for careers as plant operators, research engineers and scientists, lab analysts, project and business managers, and more.

“For the last 23 years, NCERC has helped scale countless technologies that make ethanol production more efficient, doing the research that allows for more ethanol production per bushel of corn. This work has been vital for corn farmers. Today, the opportunity in front of us is the potential of a bioeconomy – a world where U.S. corn-based products replace petroleum-based products. This NCERC expansion will result in more space, more fermentation tanks, and more expertise to guide new ideas to commercialization,” the Illinois Corn statement said, adding that Europe has around double the precision fermentation capacity of the U.S., while China accounts for some 70 percent of the world’s basic fermentation capacity.

NCERC is a nationally recognized research center dedicated to the development and commercialization of biofuels, specialty chemicals, and other renewable compounds, according to their website. The center’s fully functional dry grind pilot plant and laboratories are equipped with advanced biofuels capabilities including corn fractionation, pretreatment and fermentation, and are staffed by industry veterans with more than 150 years of collective experience in fermentation and biofuels production.

Currently, NCERC has the largest academic fermentation scale-up capacity in the U.S. (22,000L). Over 100 technologies have been advanced toward commercialization, especially in corn-to-ethanol, since 2003 at NCERC.