What we know and what we need to know was Peggy Caswell’s, USDA-ERS, topic here at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy conference. She says we need to know things about how farmers or the providers of biofuels and feed stocks are going to have to change the way they do business. She used the example of having to look at different types of contracts and financing.
She said that ethanol companies are going to need a consistent and reliable source of product and that farming by nature is very variable. So farmers will be taking big risks and that’s why contracting will be necessary. She also calls for a lot more research, something we heard earlier in the program from other speakers.
Our USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics is Gale Buchanan. He was here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference to talk about the need for research in a growing bio economy. In fact, he sees a need for a tremendous amount of research to address the opportunities presented by the whole energy picture.
He also talked about how impressed he was at last week’s Bio Energy Awareness Days in Washington, DC where 35 different universities made presentations.
We hear a lot about co-products with ethanol production like the DDGS but what about in cellulosic ethanol production? Well, Danielle Julie Carrier, Arkansas State University is doing work on that subject.
I was very interested to hear that there are some possibilities. She’s working with switchgrass and they’ve found that if you wash the feedstock prior to the pre-treatment for ethanol production that you get a water mix with flavonoids which help reduce bad cholesterol. Co-products like this have potential and may help make the production of cellulosic ethanol more attractive.
The luncheon speaker at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference focused on managing risk. Paul Willems works for BP Energy Biosciences Institute. He says it’s a collaboration between the University of California, Berkely, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and BP.
Paul says that their mission is to apply modern biology towards energy problems. The Institute was started in November of 2007 and is currently almost 70 percent staffed. They’ve already committed funding to about 50 projects and programs. Some examples of these programs include feedstock research and the discovery of new enzymes.
One of Paul’s key messages was not to get carried away with problems since solutions will take a while to achieve.
Two key words in a presentation at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference were flexibility and diversification. These are important to managing risk, especially in R&D for renewable fuels.
Our presenter was Gordon Rausser, University of California, Berkeley, who was here with his assistant Maya Papineau. I interviewed them both together after the presentation. Gordon says that we should be looking at R&D risk as a portfolio of opportunities. He says we should be managing the overall risk by recognizing the inter-relationships among the technologies and their ultimate commercialization. He also says that stand alone analysis will miss much of the opportunities that will arise.
When it comes to flexibility he suggests giving yourself options so that you can take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. He says that current ethanol plants are vulnerable going forward since they don’t have the flexibility to move to different feedstocks.
Maya talked about probably breakthroughs in renewable energy technology. She says that it’s important for how you use public and private R&D resources to maximize the investment.
You can listen to my interview with Gordon and Maya here:
While Cindy and thousands of people involved in ethanol production are attending the FEW in Nashville, I thought I’d share an interview I did at the recent Corn Utilization and Technology Conference. While we’re focused on ethanol as a fuel and that seems to be its primary use, some research is being done on other products ethanol can be used to produce.
Carl Lira, Michigan State University, spoke on “Reactive Distillations for Chemical Products from Ethanol.” Carl says he’s looking at methods to diversify the ethanol production platform. For example, he’s looking at new products that can be made from ethanol so that producers can diversify and react to the market in different ways. He’s trying to get them to think with more of a bio refinery philosophy. From a product standpoint, he’s using ethanol as a reagent to produce high quality chemicals. He says they’ve done some economic analysis which is available from the National Corn Growers Association and that it looks very attractive.
Government biofuel policies affect fuel and farm commodity prices, but the price of a barrel of oil can have even larger effects.
That is the conclusion of a report by the University of Missouri Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI). The study researched biofuel scenarios based on 500 random draws of possible weather, production and other market influences. The most extreme scenario allows current tax credits and tariffs to expire as scheduled and would not enforce the energy bill mandates. In this scenario, without most current biofuel policies, corn prices would decline 14 percent on average compared to a scenario that continues current support measures.
“The impact of biofuel policies depends not just on the policy but very much on the market context,” said Pat Westhoff, FAPRI co-director.
“Mandates have little market impact when high petroleum prices contribute to high biofuel prices and production levels.” Westhoff said. “On the other hand, mandates can be important when petroleum prices are low or crop supplies are reduced.”
The report, “Biofuels: Impact of Selected Farm Bill Provisions and other Biofuel Policy Options,” was published online June 12.
A fungus that can be grown in ethanol production leftovers could help save energy, recycle more water and improve livestock feed ethanol co-products.
That is according to research done by a team from Iowa State University and published this week by Science Daily.
“The process could change ethanol production in dry-grind plants so much that energy costs can be reduced by as much as one-third,” said Hans van Leeuwen, an Iowa State professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering and the leader of the research project.
Van Leeuwen and his team recently won the 2008 Grand Prize for University Research from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers for their work on the project.
What they found was that a certain fungus added to the liquid leftover after ethanol processing, known as thin stillage, would feed and grow. The fungus removes about 80 percent of the organic material and all of the solids in the thin stillage, allowing the water and enzymes in the thin stillage to be recycled back into production.
The fungus can be harvested as a livestock feed supplement or it can be blended with distillers dried grains to boost its value as a livestock feed and make it more suitable for feeding hogs and chickens.
The researchers estimate that just eliminating the need to evaporate thin stillage would save ethanol plants up to $800 million a year in energy costs, while allowing more water recycling would reduce the industry’s water consumption by as much as 10 billion gallons per year.
LifeLine Foods sells ethanol, but ethanol is just one of many products the company produces. The St. Joseph, MO-based corn milling plant started off as a manufacturer of snack foods in 2001. Today, LifeLine’s identity is continually evolving. The 51 percent farmer-owned company is committed to innovation and is now partnered with ICM, Inc, a world leader in ethanol facility design and engineering, in the production of ethanol.
In this DomesticFuel Cast, we hear from LifeFine Foods CEO Bill Becker about the company’s current innovations with corn, food and fuel and what’s in store for the future.
Here is the Domestic Fuel Cast #4:
You can also subscribe to the Domestic Fuel Cast using the following url/feed link: http://www.zimmcomm.biz/domesticfuel/domestic-fuel-cast.xml.
One of the largest snack suppliers in the U.S. is also the supplier of ethanol fuel for the Indy Racing League. Yup, LifeLine Foods is fueling and feeding the American public. Bill Becker, president and CEO of Lifeline, says that’s just the tip of the iceberg. LifeLine is investing in technology that will allow the company to do much more than just snack food and biofuel. Bill says his company can also remove fiber and protein from the same corn crop that it extracts snack foods and ethanol. These nutrients, he says, could potentially serve as a supplement to the world’s hungry. And that’s still not everything Bill says LifeLine can do with corn.
The story of how a small, farmer-owned company based out of St. Joseph, MO can provide snacks for major food companies, fuel one of the world’s most presitigious motor sports and more is quite a remarkable one. You can listen to my interview with Bill and hear his story about LifeLine here:
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What we know and what we need to know was Peggy Caswell’s, USDA-ERS, topic here at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy conference. She says we need to know things about how farmers or the providers of biofuels and feed stocks are going to have to change the way they do business. She used the example of having to look at different types of contracts and financing.
Read more on 
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Our USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics is Gale Buchanan. He was here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference to talk about the need for research in a growing bio economy. In fact, he sees a need for a tremendous amount of research to address the opportunities presented by the whole energy picture.
We hear a lot about co-products with ethanol production like the DDGS but what about in cellulosic ethanol production? Well, Danielle Julie Carrier, Arkansas State University is doing work on that subject.
The luncheon speaker at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference focused on managing risk. Paul Willems works for 
Two key words in a presentation at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference were flexibility and diversification. These are important to managing risk, especially in R&D for renewable fuels.
While Cindy and thousands of people involved in ethanol production are attending the FEW in Nashville, I thought I’d share an interview I did at the recent 
That is the conclusion of a 
Van Leeuwen and his team recently won the 2008 Grand Prize for University Research from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers for their work on the project.
LifeLine Foods sells ethanol, but ethanol is just one of many products the company produces. The St. Joseph, MO-based corn milling plant started off as a manufacturer of snack foods in 2001. Today, LifeLine’s identity is continually evolving. The 51 percent farmer-owned company is committed to innovation and is now partnered with ICM, Inc, a world leader in ethanol facility design and engineering, in the production of ethanol.
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One of the largest snack suppliers in the U.S. is also the supplier of ethanol fuel for the Indy Racing League. Yup, 