Renewable Fuels Association president and CEO Bob Dinneen comments on the year in preview and some of the top ethanol stories he expects to see in 2012
In our latest ZimmPoll we asked our farming readers about tillage practices with the question, “Which tillage practice do you employ on most of your farming operation.” It looks like No-Till is the winner with 24%, followed by Conventional at 21%, Other at 9% and Strip-Till at 6%.
Our next ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, “Will commodity prices be higher or lower a year from now??” Let us know and thank you for participating.
ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.
A utility from the Aloha State is looking for a company to provide biodiesel for one of its new power plants.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser says Hawaiian Electric Co. needs the green fuel for its 110-megawatt generating station in Campbell Industrial Park:
The request for proposals state’s HECO’s preference for locally-produced biodiesel, but if it isn’t available in sufficient quantities the utility said it would accept biodiesel produced on the Mainland or a mix of the two.
The contract is for three to seven million gallons of biodiesel a year over a three-year period. The contract will replace a two-year deal with an Iowa-based supplier of biodiesel made from waste animal fat. That contract that expires in July 2012.
HECO says the Campbell plant is the largest commercial power plant in the world powered exclusively by biodiesel. This announcement comes on the heels of last month’s announcement that ‘Āina Koa Pono, Hawaiian for “for the good of the land,” landed a contract to provide sustainable biofuels for HECO.
Last fall farmers in and near Emmetsburg, Iowa were harvesting biomass. Currently, they are in the process of delivering these biomass bales to POET’s 22-acre storage site situated next to Project LIBERTY, the future 25 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol plant.
Area farmers have harvested nearly 56,000 tons of corn cobs, leaves, husks and some stalk but had to wait to deliver the material while the USDA worked out the details of their Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). The program provides matching funds of up to $45 per ton to each grower for a maximum of two years. The goal of the program is to help farmers offset the start-up costs for developing the cellulosic feedstock market for biofuels and renewable energy.
“While we shared the farmers’ frustration with delays to BCAP, we are happy to see that the program is being implemented and farmers are now delivering biomass to POET,” Project LIBERTY Director Jim Sturdevant said. “I know they are eager to deliver their bales, just as we are eager to validate our receiving and handling procedures at the new biomass stackyard.
Sturdevant continued, “BCAP is important to helping these first farmers get the new biomass market off the ground. BCAP’s inclusion in the next Farm Bill is an important part of continuing to develop this market.”
So last week, the farmers began completing the application process and shortly thereafter, began to deliver the biomass. Biomass bales this year will be used primarily to test procedures for delivery, receiving, quality assurance, storage, and handling at the stackyard. When operational, Project LIBERTY will use about 300,000 tons of biomass annually to produce ethanol.
One potential hurdle to the commercialization of algal fuels are how to harvest the algae. But one company believes that they already have this challenge figured out. Kent Bioenergy has been harvesting algae for years, as part of their aquaculture business that dates back the the 1970s. The original company needed to learn how to clean the water used for fish farms and the ticket to success was algae.
Fast forward to today and Kent Bioenergy, the latest iteration of the company, has developed a proprietary algae harvesting method over the past 15 years. “After watching algae being grown for the purposes of cleaning water for several years we began making observations on how algae grow, die and live,” explained Barry Toyonaga, Ph.D. who is the Chief Business Officer for the company.
“We began to notice certain trends, the ability of conditions to be manipulated on a large scale, and not employing very much energy or chemical additives, we learned how to manipulate the environment of the water so that the algae would settle. And algae don’t naturally like to settle because they need the sunlight near the surface of the water to survive. So we taught them literally, like a farmer in any kind of agriculture business teaches its crops what to do to make them more marketable, our fish farmers taught the algae what to do when we wanted it to be harvest time.”
The result was that the Kent researchers learned how to manipulate the algae to settle in the ponds and they discovered that if they placed a motorized conveyor belt at the bottom of where these algae were settling, the conveyor belt pulled these algae straight out of the water.
Toyonaga believes that his company has one of the lowest costs, if not the lowest cost method of harvesting at a scale compatible with commodity products. This is a key element if algal biofuels will be commercially viable.
To learn more about how to harvest algae, listen to my interview with Barry here. Barry Toyonaga interview
The final ZimmComm publication survey winner has been drawn and the lucky one is Rita Ruud, a nutritionist with North Dakota State University and World Dairy Diary reader. She will be receiving a check in the mail for $250 for taking just about two minutes of her time to fill out our survey and help us do a better job of serving the folks who read this on-line publication.
January was the third and final month for the ZimmComm publication survey since we have now received enough responses to make it statistically significant. We would sincerely thank everyone who took the time to help us out.
Here’s a few interesting things we learned from the survey about Domestic Fuel readers:
The largest percentage of our readers (13%) are existing biofuels producers. The next largest categories were Advertising/Marketing/Sales (9%), Consulting (8%), Engineering (7%), Consumer/General Public (7%), and Association/Organization (6%).
We had responses from 38 states the District of Columbia and Canada. Most responses came from California, South Dakota, Missouri, Minnesota, and Iowa.
Thanks again to everyone who filled out the survey!
Iowa high school students showed off their talent for video production in the first ever Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) “Fuel the Future” video contest.
Students were challenged to create the best video highlighting the importance and benefits of renewable fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, to local communities, Iowa and the nation and the four winning videos were featured at the recent 5th Annual Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. The winners were selected by a panel of five judges who combined extensive film, television, marketing, and renewable fuels expertise.
Treynor High School students Spencer Hawk, Alex Severn, Garrett Gibson and Conrad Sain won the $2,000 grand prize for their video entitled “Fuel of the Future” – a hilarious and clever parody of an action movie trailer. The are pictured here receiving their award.
“The judges were blown away by the creativity and effort the students put into their renewable fuels videos,” said IRFA Biofuels Manager Grant Menke. “IRFA congratulates not just the winning students, but all those who participated. This was a great opportunity for students to learn about the benefits of renewable fuels and to share that knowledge with their peers and all Iowans.”
The contest was made possible by the Iowa Office of Energy Independence through funding from its Iowa Power Fund Community Grant program and the sponsorship of Faegre & Benson.
The other top winners were:
Linn-Mar High School student Sam Fathallah from Marion won the $1000 second place prize for his video called “What is Biodiesel?”
Roland-Story High School students Andrew Smith and Kendall Gustafson, both from Story City, won the $600 third place prize for their video entitled “Bio Fuel.”
South Hamilton High School student Marcus Hemphill of Jewell earned the $400 fourth place prize for his video called “The Biofuel Network.”
ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency. 
Treynor High School students Spencer Hawk, Alex Severn, Garrett Gibson and Conrad Sain won the $2,000 grand prize for their video entitled “Fuel of the Future” – a hilarious and clever parody of an action movie trailer. The are pictured here receiving their award.