Domestic Fuel

It should come as no surprise that demand for ethanol is setting records this year.

The Renewable Fuels Association just announced the lastest available statistics to confirm that. According to RFA, May ethanol demand set a record at 349,000 barrels per day. That’s well ahead of May’s production figure of 293,000 barrels per day.

Ethanol imports were down in May from April, according to RFA President Bob Dinneen. “The decline in imports from April to May explains much of the ‘distressed’ situation we have seen in the spot market for ethanol in recent weeks,” said Dinneen. “Imports from countries like Brazil were late arriving and caused some to become unnecessarily nervous about ethanol supplies. Fortunately, the U.S. ethanol industry has grown and continues to grow at a pace sufficient to meet surging demand for this cleaner-burning, domestically-produced renewable fuel.”

At the groundbreaking ceremony for Midwest Ethanol’s O’Neill, Nebraska plant on Friday, company officials announced two more plant locations for the state. (Picture courtesy of Kurt Bravo).

The specific site locations were identified as Furnas County Ethanol, Inc. in Arapahoe, which is 30 miles southwest of Holdrege, and Dawson County Ethanol, Inc. located in Elm Creek, near Kearney, Nebraska.

Each plant will be permitted to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol each year, along with 320,000 tons of dry distillers grain(a high protein cattle feed), and will consume more than 37 million bushels of corn annually

To some people, manure is just waste. To Iowa State University researcher Samy Sadaka, it’s bio-oil. He and other researchers at ISU are working on a project to convert farm waste into bio-oil.

According to an ISU release, the project is being supported by $190,000 in grants from the Iowa Biotechnology Byproducts Consortium. The researchers are working to take wastes from Iowa farms — manure and corn stalks — and turn them into a bio-oil that could be used for boiler fuel and perhaps transportation fuel.

In the photo from ISU, Sadaka is working with his bio-drying system that is used to dry a mixture of manure and corn stalks so they can be burned to produce the bio-oil.