The Luverne Fire Department and Rock County ambulance responded to a report of a dryer fire around 11:30 p.m. Monday at the Gevo plant on the west side of Luverne.
According to Fire Chief David Van Batavia, when firefighters arrived at the scene flames were coming from a dryer, but the blaze was contained.
He said the explosion doors (pressure relief doors) had blown off, but it’s unclear how much other damage occurred at the plant.
The primary concern was cooling down the source of the blaze in order to prevent heat from affecting other areas of the plant, which produces highly combustible isobutanol and ethanol.
“We’re always nervous out there,” Van Batavia said, adding that the Luverne Fire Department has toured the facility and worked with plant employees about how to respond to potential emergencies there.
“We rely on the staff about what we can touch and what we can’t, and they were already spraying things down with their own hoses when we got there.”
He also said this isn’t the first time the Luverne Fire Department has responded to a dryer fire at the plant.
He said four trucks and about 25 firemen were on the scene until nearly 4 a.m. and finished cleaning and putting away equipment around 5 a.m.
Gevo President Chris Ryan, Denver, Colorado, told the Star Herald Tuesday morning he had spoken with plant manager Mike Stanley, Luverne, that morning.
“Mike’s pretty tired this morning,” Ryan said. “The team out there and the fire department did a phenomenal job working together to handle the fire.”
He said dryer fires aren’t that uncommon at plants like Gevo because of the heat involved in the drying the feed byproducts from corn.
Ryan said the fact that the explosion doors blew off means the equipment was working properly to release pressure. “They’re designed to come off in an event like this,” Ryan said.
He said no one was hurt and neighborhood residents weren’t in any danger, but the plant was shut down while staff assessed the damage.
Ryan traveled from Denver to Luverne Tuesday to work with staff on investigating the cause of the blaze.
He told the Star Herald Wednesday, that damage had indeed been contained to the dryer unit, and it will take a few days to repair it.
"We should be up and running again in a few days," Ryan said. "Response to this event was so great. The team here did such a good job of cleaning up and repairing equipment and identifying the cause."
He said an operational procedure contributed to the fire, and that process has been corrected.
Gevo is a renewable technology, chemical and biofuels company that purchased the former Agri-Energy Ethanol plant in 2010.
The Luverne plant was built in 1996 by local farmer investors and went online with ethanol production in 1998.