Where Ethanol Is King

…Robert Anex, associate director of the Office of Biorenewable Programs at Iowa State University in Ames, envisions a time when portable cellulose processors work right alongside the corn combines, manufacturing “bio-oil” that can be trucked out to the refineries. He’s also a proponent of double-crop sequences – for example, planting a relative of wheat known as triticale in the winter, then harvesting that and planting short-season corn in the spring. Both crops could provide food as well as the raw material for ethanol.

“Now there’s an economic incentive to plant a cover crop,” Anex explained.


If Iowans do it wrong, the land will pay the price: Anex estimated that soil erosion could create a situation in which the state loses a pound of topsoil for every gallon of ethanol gained. But if the state does it right, we could see the rise of an energy emirate that capitalizes on a wide variety of biofuel technologies – ranging from biomass syngas to new synergies with livestock operations (which can produce the methane to power ethanol distilleries).

“It’s very hard at this point to say exactly which technologies will win,” Anex said. “But I think that that’s not really the right question. A lot of people ask, ‘Well, is it going to be thermochemical? Are we just going to get gasification, or are we just going to do sugars?’ It depends on the feedstock, it depends on what region you’re in, it depends on the company that’s putting this on the ground. … There’s not one solution.”

Cosmic Log