PRIAM -- Their grandparents knew the value of corn cobs as a
fuel, and used them to help warm the house or heat up the oven
for baking bread. Yet brothers Lonnie Fosso and Ryan Fosso
couldn't help but admit their amazement Wednesday as they
watched two combines harvest their corn while also collecting
the corn cobs. The corn cobs are being harvested as fuel for the
Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company plant in Benson. "I wish they
could see this,'' said Lonnie Fosso. Dozens of people did. The
harvest at the Fosso farm south of Priam served as the first of
three demonstration sites for a first-of-its-kind project in the
region. Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company has been powering some
of the operations at its 47 million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant
by feeding biomass to a gasifier. The Frontline Technology
system turns the biomass -- currently wood chips -- into a
synthetic gas that can replace natural gas. After more than four
months of trial use, the gasifier has proven its ability to
displace about 25 percent of the