Broin a South Dakota company said Monday it has made breakthroughs in the production of ethanol that enables it to use corn stalks, leaves and other plant material in the production of the motor fuel. The new technology will be used at a Broin Companies plant in the northeast Iowa town of Emmetsburg, located 120 miles northwest of Des Moines. The ethanol plant will be expanded to use the entire corn plant instead of just the kernel. The plant's capacity of 50 million gallons of ethanol a year will be increased to 125 million gallons with an investment of about $200 million, said CEO Jeff Broin. He said it is the first commercial scale production facility in the United States to make ethanol from plant material other than the corn kernel. Most ethanol in the United States is made from the starch contained in a corn kernel. The starch is broken down into basic sugar components, which are fermented using yeast and a cooking process into grain alcohol. This is often refered to as the first generation ethanol process. The Sioux Falls, S.D., company will use technology it has developed with Denmark-based Novozymes and Delaware-based DuPont that breaks down the cellulose in corn stalks and other plant parts into basic sugars that can be fermented into ethanol – a much more complicated process called the second generation. Here in Denmar the first large scale first generation ethanol plant will be build from 2007-2009. The design allows for upgrade to second generation processesing.