June 29, 2007

With ethanol production and market needs driving grain production, the topic of ethanol production is on many producers' minds. To stay informed, check the following highlights of reports from USDA's Agricultural Research Service related to ethanol production. Story titles link to the full stories.

New Technology Could Lead to More Energy-Efficient Ethanol Production

• Ethanol to fuel cars, trucks and other vehicles might tomorrow take less energy to produce, thanks to a device invented by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in California.

  Chemical engineers Richard D. Offeman and George H. Robertson at the ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., think it may be possible to cut energy costs by using a series of specially designed permeable plastic sheets, or membranes, to produce ethanol from fermented broths of corn, or straw and other kinds of biomass feedstocks. 

Ethanol Byproducts Pelletized

• One hundred percent of distiller's dried grains with solubles (DDGS), a byproduct of ethanol production, can be pelletized without adding a binding agent or anything else, according to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and cooperators.

Fuel for Your Body - and Car

• With an increasing percentage of the nation's corn harvest going to ethanol production, some are questioning the wisdom of taking away corn as food for people. But Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Kurt Rosentrater has a way to at least partially allay that concern: create new foods from an edible byproduct of ethanol production, distiller's dried grains (DDGs).

DDGs - Ethanol Byproduct Fights Weeds, Boosts Crop Yields

• Distiller's dried grains (DDGs) are the leftovers from converting corn into fuel ethanol, a cleaner burning alternative to gasoline. In the Midwest alone, ethanol producers generate 10 million tons of DDGs annually. Farmers buy the stuff for between $85 and $110 a ton and feed it to livestock.

  Soon, though, growers may be spreading it on their crop fields to cut down on herbicide use. Some DDG extracts may even find health-food uses. Several ARS scientists certainly hope so, since U.S. ethanol production is expected to climb from 4.4 billion gallons annually to 7.5 billion by 2012. That'll mean even more DDGs and other byproducts. Through laboratory, greenhouse, and field experiments, the researchers have shown that using DDGs as mulch not only suppresses weeds, but also bolsters growth in tomatoes and some turfgrasses.

Robot, Yeast Combo may Mean More Ethanol

• Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Peoria, Ill., are excited about the latest member to join their team: a one-armed robot. They expect it to speed studies aimed at harnessing the power of proteins for industrial uses, such as making fuel ethanol from fibrous corn stover.

Breeding Soybeans for Ethanol and Fiberboard

• Having successfully turned pieces of giant soybean stalks into charcoal briquettes, Agricultural Research Service chemical engineer Justin Barone now believes they would make good fiberboard and other wood-substitute products as well. ARS geneticist Thomas E. Devine took the plants to Barone after noticing they had a rare ability to stand up straight all season, despite their unusual height of up to 7 feet. Soybean plants often lodge - fall down - as they grow taller.

  Barone is with the ARS Environmental Management and Byproduct Utilization Laboratory, and Devine is with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, both in Beltsville, Md.

  Devine suspected one reason the experimental line of soybeans stood so straight all season was because the cellulose fibers in their sapling-like stalks were unusually strong.

Citrus Peel Waste a Potential Source of Ethanol

• Thanks to recent hikes in gasoline prices, there is a renewed interest in finding a cheaper way to fill up the gas tank. Researchers at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Citrus and Subtropical Products Laboratory in Winter Haven, Fla. have been working on a potential substitute: citrus peels.

  In 1992, Karel Grohmann, then research leader of the Winter Haven lab, began researching the feasibility of converting citrus peel waste into fuel ethanol. Citrus waste materials are rich in pectin, cellulose and hemicellusic polysaccharides, which can be hydrolyzed into sugars and fermented into alcohol. Most of this dried peel residue - a total of 1.2 million tons annually in Florida alone - is currently marketed as low-value cattle feed, despite its relatively high processing cost.