Burning Bio News

Rutgers University professor Clinton Andrews and colleagues ran the numbers on land required to implement a renewable energy strategy. They identified clear limits on some technologies, notably biofuels, but concluded that the bigger challenges to renewable energy and land relate to siting energy facilities, particularly transmission lines. –mj: This report contains some interesting information, but the extension of supplying 100 of world energy by individual technologies is puzzling. Presenting extraneous information just because it can be calculated clouds the discussion.

The University of Minnesota, Morris is nearly ready to utilize its biomass gasification system to heat and cool a large portion of its campus buildings. Experiments with fuel densities, which had occupied plant researchers efforts for months have paid off. Lowell Rasmussen, UMM’s Vice Chancellor for Finance and Facilities, said that test burns last week using wood chips and corn stover have proved successful. – mj: This operation has been years in the making. Well done UMM!

Fuel from Aquatic Biomass, Santa Rosa, CA, demonstrates the ability of native water plants to scrub residual pollutants and endocrine disrupters from treated wastewater and then be harvested to produce methane in an anaerobic digester. Students from Sonoma State University diverted secondarily treated wastewater into ditches and planted natives like marsh pennywort, Azola (mosquito fern), duck weed and algae. With demonstrable scrubbing results from the aquatic biomass in place, Fuel from Aquatic Biomass now moves on to the methane production phase.

Phil McLain, Iredell County, NC, added a seed oil facility to his farm (for processing oil), and it has opened up new markets for canola. McLain farmed 1,200 acres of canola last year. Canola produces more oil than soybeans and offers a good alternative to wheat because it adds marketing diversity and is easier to control. The McLains originally intended to use the oil in the production of biodiesel, but there is a higher value in extracting oil for cooking.

Iowa State University economist Mike Duffy has developed an analysis of estimated production costs for switchgrass in Iowa, and then changes some of the assumptions which may be more or less applicable to your operation. Based on some initial conservative assumptions such as 4 tons per acre yield, production costs are $82/ton. Other advances in yield, land cost, and storage cost, all could lower the cost of producing switchgrass. –mj: On a per ton basis this is not a very compelling price. It means that the sale price has to be higher for folks to grow it.

U.S. farm groups and lawmakers must consider whether fundamental change is needed in farm subsidies that date from the Depression, said the head of the House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday after the opening work on the new farm bill, due in two years. – mj: The Farm Bill is the legislation that determines the ’subsidies’ that US farmers receive for their crops. It is always a lively debate and generally poorly understood. With the advent of biofuels and the wild economy, production agriculture is smack in the middle.

The USDA’s Biomass Crop Assistance Program proposed rule comment period expired April 9 and the USDA is sorting through the 24,000-plus comment submissions to formulate a fair and consensus-driven rule. The proposed rule was released Feb. 8, and a 60-day time frame was allowed for individuals or groups to weigh in on BCAP by submitting feedback on numerous program elements. Some key provisions in the proposed rule included eliminating the dry tonnage measure and adapting to industry norms, scaling back matching collection, harvest, storage and transport (CHST) payments of certain qualifiers, and seemingly the most debated provision, a prohibition on wood materials that might otherwise be used for higher-value purposes.

Genetically engineered biotechnology is one of those issues that people love to hate. This article on the ecofriend site lists 12 genetic technologies that are earth friendly including pigs and cow that produce less toxic manure, bacterium that generate fuels and plastics, as well as viruses that produce batteries. It is a nice reminder that the world as we know it is completely changing.

Understanding biomass productivity on specific landscape positions is essential to realizing the highest financial returns on the integration of herbaceous and woody biomass crops at the field scale according to a recent University of Minnesota study. Crops evaluated in the study were alfalfa, corn stover, corn, grain, willow (two clones), cottonwood, poplar and switchgrass. Landscape positions included summit (excellent water drainage but visible erosion), depositional (receives water from two hill slopes and is characterized by poor drainage and accumulated topsoil), flat (poorly drained but has retained topsoil), and four hill slopes with east, south, southwest and north aspects.

The Osage Bio ethanol from barley plant in Hopewell, VA, has spurred renewed interest in barley production among farmers and is the impetus for a multi-faceted Bio Energy Cropping Systems research project by a diverse team of Virginia Tech researchers. “The primary reason more Virginia farmers don’t grow barley is a lack of market. Now, Osage Bio is offering a stable market, a fair price for barley (75 percent of corn future prices) and more growers are interested in growing the crop,” says Virginia Tech researchers David Holshouser.

More soybean, corn and cotton acres this spring, fewer wheat and sorghum acres — that’s the essence of what farmers told USDA about their planting intentions this spring, USDA reported. Corn acreage is expected at 88.8 million acres, up 2.32 ma from a year ago; soybean acreage is expected to total 78.1 million acres, up 0.65 ma; cotton acreage is seen at 10.51 ma, up 1.37 ma, and all wheat acres are expected to fall 5.3 ma, to 53.83 million acres. The report should be viewed as neutral to bullish for corn and beans and neutral to bearish for wheat, said DTN Analyst John Sanow.

A University of Illinois study found “widespread occurrence of plant-parasitic nematodes in the first reported nematode survey of miscanthus and witchgrass plants used for biofuels.” The wormlike nematodes were found in test plots in 37 miscanthus and 48 switchgrass plots in Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, South Dakota and Tennessee during tests in 2008 and 2009, according to the Illinois researchers.

The Frontier Dairy is planning a 10,000 cow facility near Edgeley, ND. In addition to the milking cows it would also have another 2,000 dry cows and 16,000 heifers on the premises. Output from the operation would average 800,000 pounds of milk per day. The operation will contract with local farmers for about 9,000 acres of corn chopped for silage. That corn will be chopped over a two-week period each fall and piled on a 25-acre asphalt slab outdoors. The farms methane digesters will be partly owned in conjunction with Great River Energy. The solids from the digester are dried and used for bedding within the farm or pressed into briquettes sold to power companies to burn with coal. The liquid waste will be spread out over about 4,000 acres of farm land.

Federal limits on water that can be pumped out of a major river delta for California farmers are scientifically justified, a much-anticipated report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a finding hailed by environmentalists in the state’s epic water wars. Paul Wenger, President of the California Farm Bureau Federation said the report showed the need for “better justification of water restrictions” and that there were flaws in the Endangered Species Act. Wenger also singled out the study’s conclusion that a number of factors, including sewage treatment plants and non-native fish, represented a threat to the protected species. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said irrigation districts south of the delta, which represent farmers on the west side of the state’s fertile Central Valley, will get 25 percent of their contracted water allotment from the Bureau of Reclamation, up from just 5 percent in February.

South Dakota State University research is exploring a native perennial called cup plant as a potential new biomass crop that could also store carbon in its extensive root system and add biodiversity to biomass plantings. The cup plant is a relative of the sunflower family. It has large seeds and good seedling vigor, and it yields a lot of biomass. The project is funded by a $324,336 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy channeled through the SDSU-based North Central Sun Grant Center.

Great River Energy unveiled plans Wednesday in Jamestown for a first-of-its-kind $300 million biorefinery near its power plant, Spiritwood Station, ND, 10 miles east of the city. The biorefinery is expected to go online with the production of cellulosic ethanol, primarily using wheat straw, by 2015. Project development and feasibility studies are under way now. Broekema said a 20-million-gallon biorefinery would need 480,000 tons of crop residue, mostly wheat straw and/or corn stover a year from a 70-mile radius. Huge bales would need to be trucked in seven days a week.

New York-based Summerhill Biomass Systems unveils its technology for converting plant waste into biomass powder in King Ferry, NY. Summerhill has patents pending on its system, which produces a burnable fine powder fuel, similar in texture to baking powder. The company initially received a $75,000 grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for feasibility studies and is looking for additional investors.

Available land and amenable farmers make Central New York a prime location for biomass fuel production, says a study released Wednesday. But the renewable energy source would likely need the help of government subsidies to compete with fossil fuels in the short run, research by Cato Analytics suggests. And although the land is available and farmers are willing, the market is not ready for the crop, according to the study, funded in part by the New York Farm Viability Institute.

Fred Below of the University of Illinois Department of Crop Sciences recently discussed some of what it takes to consistently grow 300 bushels per acre corn in Illinois. He said, the prerequisites to grow crops are drainage, weed control and healthy soil with proper pH and adequate levels of phosphorus and potassium. Below has ranked seven factors that influence corn yield. Each factor is given an average bushel per acre value.

With the launch of the most recent space shuttle, the Endeavour, took with it a biofuel experiment. Part of the payload is a study of the Jatropha curcas plant, used for producing biofuel, to see if the breeding process can be speeded up for commercial use.