Cargill subsidiary Emerald Renewable Energy announced recently it plans to build 4 new ethanol plants in the US each with 100 million gallon per year throughput.

Each plant will use nearly 40 million bushels of corn annually and produce 100 million gallons of ethanol and over 300,000 tons of dry distillers grains for animal feed each year. The plant sites being considered include greenfield locations as well as co-locations with Cargill grain elevators and other utility infrastructure providers. The plants are expected to create about 40 jobs per location.

I think that Cargill and other ethanol producers ought to be focused on the distribution problem. This is the time (new Congress and all) to get something interesting to happen; like mandating E85 replaces the useless middle grade at US gas stations. We’ll see how it goes.


Technorati Tags: Ethanol | Transportation | Biomass

A few months ago I posted an entry about biodiesel fuel which is a great example of biomass at work. A plant undergoing a process to transform it into a fuel for use (biorefining) in our current infrastructure, in this case, transportation.

That’s a great specific case, but biomass is, when you get right down to it, harnessing the power of photosynthesis. Biomass can be easily characterized as biofuels (biodiesel and ethanol,) biopower (typically burning plant waste to generate electricity,) and bioproducts (converting plants into chemicals that replace petroleum products.)

As is true with most renewable technologies, biomass has been around forever. While you might not really think of it this way, a wood fueled fire providing heat really is biomass at work.

Advantages to biomass include the fact that the fuel stock is renewable, plentiful, and generally neutral in CO2 emissions. We certainly know how to grow things very effectively. Disadvantages include particulate emissions from oxidation and farming related issues – water usage and pollution through fertilizers and insectacides. Also, each square meter of ground dedicated to biomass may be a square meter taken out of food production.

Garden variety soybean field (a prominant source of biofuels.)


Like wind and solar, biomass has it’s place in the renewable portfolio and has the potential, particularly in the transportation sector, to move us toward energy independence from fossil fuels.


Technorati Tags: Energy | Renewable | Biomass

Agriculture is one thing this country has done well historically. It turns out, without a huge amount of hassle, we can use that agricultural prowess to “grow” our own fuel. Sound crazy? Perhaps, but something that’s happening today. In 1999, 500,000 gallons of biodiesel was produced in the US. In 2005, the volume was around 75 million gallons.



So what is biodiesel (mono alkyl esters) anyway? It’s a product of vegetable oil, methanol, and lye put through a process called transesterification. This yields usable fuel and a glycerin by-product. Turns out, it’s pretty trivial to produce on your own, there are many step by step guides, but this one is the clearest and most complete in my opinion.

Biodiesel works in any standard diesel engine and can be (and is) mixed with petrodiesel to get different properites. For instance, biodiesel is more viscous than standard petrodiesel and is more temperature sensitive (if you’re in the cold, you want a bio-petro mix most likely.) This fuel is for sale in retail locations with ratings like B20 (20% bio) to B100 (100% bio.)

With the crunch on fossil fuels, wouldn’t it be great if we could simply grow our way out of this mess? Here’s a great FAQ on the fuel.