In May of 2023 I had CTE do a two day training at my facility.  The training was CTE’s BioProcess Academy given by Jeff Unsinger, Michael Vander Vorste, Clayton Wulf, and Adam Vaughn. The training covered the entire process in depth and hands on.

I scheduled my entire operations crew to take this training. CTE’s staff were very accommodating to the schedule needs and did two site visits to complete the training for all of them.  Once completed, the operations team plant IQ increased drastically.  When operators start green at running the plant, they are very task oriented; staring at the DCS, doing as instructed, but never really learning the reasons why they’re making those adjustments or collecting those samples. This training played a huge part in giving new and even veteran operators the science/theory behind everything they do on a day to day basis and was very much appreciated by everyone involved. It was during the startup of the facility which might seem like a bad time to do it considering how much was going on but the immediate impact the training had on the operations team’s knowledge was worth well more than the conflict of timing.

In talking to my operators after the training they were very happy with the training and asked a lot of great questions during. Jeff and his team are very knowledgeable in the various processes and equipment in an ethanol plant. They are a great resource for fermentation analysis as well.

Great group, Great training!

Focusing on real world experience as well as the science behind how the process was designed, they were able to give focused training to our operations and lab staff in a setting where the staff was able to discuss any questions they may have had about process. Being a destination plant, the local labor pool is largely unfamiliar with fuel ethanol in general and any new hire we bring on has proven to be an extensive training process. CTE Global and the operations team were able to give new operators as well as more seasoned operators a fresh perspective on process from their collective experiences in the industry, as well as share stories of things they had seen throughout their careers. Being able to explain what was taking place in each stage of process and then taking a tour of our process buildings; the staff were able to begin making the connections between what they were seeing on our DCS and the real world equipment, giving them a boost in the confidence that they understood how the parameters they were monitoring mattered and allowing them to perform their job duties more effectively.

CTE operator training is on point with a design specific classroom curriculum reinforced by trips into the field. The operations teams in attendance at our facility had nothing but good things to say about it.

We have experienced higher than normal turnover in our Operations Department like so many other production facilities. I reached out to our CTE support team to conduct new operator training, and they came through with their BioProcess Academy.

They went through fundamentals of the fuel ethanol process and went into the ‘weeds’ with topics that specifically mattered to our plant. We had good dialog and questions from our experienced operators to our newest team members throughout the training.

The CTE team has firsthand knowledge and experience in multiple plant designs which makes any plant training unique and specific to its needs. We look forward to the next installment of this type of training with our CTE team.