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David Pyle certainly qualifies as a homegrown talent.
A month after his college graduation, the engineer turned his attention toward making his Wabash County hometown’s $130 million ethanol plant a success. His boss says Pyle’s ideas already have improved efficiency at Poet’s North Manchester plant, nine months after its grand opening.
Poet, the nation’s largest ethanol producer, hired 23-year-old Pyle to be the plant engineer a year ago. Although Pyle is young, he brings fresh ideas to the position, said Bryan Christjansen, the plant’s general manager. Pyle isn’t locked into specific ideas about how best to operate the plant.
“He’s not tunnel-visioned,” Christjansen said. “He analyzes things quite a bit” before making a decision.
Pyle is responsible for ensuring the plant produces the most ethanol at the lowest possible cost. The plant can produce up to 68 million gallons of the alternative fuel each year. Pyle tries to minimize the amount of natural gas, water and corn used in ethanol production. The North Manchester plant can consume up to 22 million bushels of corn a year.
“Every day, we’re finding ways to get more ethanol out of every corn kernel,” Pyle said.
Pyle became interested in alternative fuels while researching biodiesel at Purdue University in West Lafayette. Working for Poet gave Pyle an opportunity to join the growing alternative-energy industry. The U.S. produced 9 billion gallons of ethanol last year, up from 2.8 billion gallons in 2003, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry trade group.
Poet manufactures more than 1.54 billion gallons of ethanol a year. The company, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., is researching how to make ethanol from corn cobs, an agricultural waste product.
“They’re definitely on the cutting edge of ethanol and technology and biofuels,” Pyle said. “It’s exciting to be a part of that.”
Pyle’s ideas caught the attention of some leaders at Poet’s 25 other plants, Christjansen said. Pyle tracked every adjustment the North Manchester plant made in its fermentation process to determine how each one affected the ethanol’s final cost.
Christjansen presented Pyle’s spreadsheet to other general managers at a meeting in February, and he said other plants want to implement a similar system.
Working for Poet also gave Pyle the opportunity to stay close to home. He still helps drive a tractor and run the office at his family’s grain farm near North Manchester. The farm sells some corn to Poet for ethanol production.
Pyle planned to look for work in Warsaw and Fort Wayne after he received his degree in agricultural and biological engineering from Purdue. Few rural communities offer the engineering positions he wanted to pursue.
“I knew I wanted to stay somewhere in northern Indiana, close to home,” he said, “but I didn’t expect until I started searching for a job to find one even closer to home than I expected.”
Like Pyle, most graduates of the Purdue College of Agriculture look for job opportunities near their families, said Lori Barber, the College of Agriculture’s assistant director of academic programs.
The college surveyed 224 graduates from Pyle’s class, she said, and nearly 80 percent of the survey respondents, 178, found a position in Indiana.
Pyle’s local knowledge allows him to represent Poet in the community, Christjansen said. If Christjansen cannot attend a community meeting, he knows residents who attend will recognize Pyle, a Manchester Junior-Senior High School graduate, and be comfortable talking to him.
As Poet continues researching ethanol made from corn cobs, Pyle hopes to play a role in the company’s future. He said he wants to keep learning more about ethanol production and sees a bright future for Poet and the industry.
With his levelheaded approach to business and bright mind, Pyle could be ready to become an ethanol plant general manager in seven or eight years, Christjansen said. After Pyle gains additional firsthand experience managing people and finances, he’d be prepared for that kind of position.
The plant engineer is a “huge asset” for Poet, Christjansen said.
“Anything he wants to learn,” Christjansen said, “I’m going to try to give him the opportunity to succeed.”
