The Farm Foundation just concluded a conference in their series titled, “Transition To A Bio Economy.” This one was on risk, infrastructure and industry evolution and all the presentations were on biofuels. I conducted a series of interviews with the presenters which you can find with this link.
There were a lot of interesting topics like this one on co-products with cellulosic ethanol production. We hear more about co-products with corn ethanol but apparently there are some promising new options with cellulosic. Danielle Julie Carrier, Arkansas State University is doing work on that subject.
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.
You can listen to my interview with Julie here:
This year’s Iowa Corn Indy 250 is over and as usual, ethanol won. Actually, Dan Wheldon, Target Chip Ganassi Racing won the race. It was a great birthday present since he turned 30 the day of the race.
We like to say ethanol won because it’s the fuel powering the high performance Honda engines in the Indy cars. This is the second season for the IRL to use 100 percent fuel grade ethanol in the cars. The drivers love it. Performance is proven, they carry less fuel since they get better gas mileage, the air is easier to breathe and their eyes don’t burn like when they used to run on methanol. So really, no matter who crosses the finish line first, ethanol is in the tank with them.
A lot of people were rooting for The Team Ethanol car which ran as high as 3rd place but according to driver, Ryan Hunter-Reay, they lost a gamble on fuel strategy. He ran a strong race all day and really wanted to finish on the podium in front of so many fans of ethanol but it wasn’t to be. He finished 8th though and maybe he’ll get some breaks to go his way next time.
Hello and welcome to my first post here on Good Fuels. I’m attending the Corn Utilization and Technology Conference in Kansas City, MO. We’re going to be having some sessions that will focus on biofuels so I hope to have more to come. In the meantime, our USDA Under Secretary for Rural Development, Tom Dorr, provided the keynote address.
He told attendees that include corn growers as well as industry and university personnel that there are challenges ahead like the recent Grocery Manufacturers Association attack on ethanol. He says that’s making it difficult to get the facts out to the media. He said that no good deed goes unpunished and that we’ve had the good side of the cycle and now we’re going to have to suffer through the other side. He says it’s difficult to fight a well financed opponent that’s less inclined to deal with facts as opposed to dealing with emotion.
Before his keynote I did a short interview with Sec. Dorr which you can listen to here:
During his speech he made a great statement about the misinformation campaign that’s going on which he says “is unfortunate and it is destructive and I resent it, not only as a farmer but also as a policy person.”: