Speaker Hastert Helps Dedicate Ethanol Research Center In University Park

U.S. Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., led the Illinois delegation and other state, local, and university officials today in dedicating the National Corn-To-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) located in Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s (SIUE) University Park.

Hastert, a long-time advocate for agriculture, joined U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., U.S. Congressman John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, U.S. Congressman Jerry Costello, D-Belleville, and Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn for the morning ceremony that took place inside the main research bay of the center at 400 University Park Drive.

Also on the dais were SIUE Research Professor Rodney Bothast, director of the new 36,000-square-foot center, SIUE Chancellor David Werner, and SIU President James E. Walker.

The $20 million center was constructed with $14 million in federal funds and $6 million from the state of Illinois.

Walker said the research center will play an important role in fulfilling the university's mission of service. "This research center is truly one-of-a-kind in the U.S., bringing unique opportunities for research and business development to the region," Walker said. "We are grateful for the support of the many people who made this facility possible, especially our elected officials."

Werner added that the center will help open new doors to producing alternative, renewable fuels. "The Illinois Congressional Delegation and our state senators and representatives worked hard for the creation and funding of the research center, and to bring it here to the SIUE campus," Werner said. "Their hard work is the reason we can stand here on day one of what we believe will lead to a revolution in the creation of alternative fuels."

Center Director Rodney J. Bothast, internationally recognized authority on industrial microbiology and biochemical engineering, said the NCERC will enable researchers to experiment with alternatives to fossil fuels in the only facility in the world that fully emulates both a corn-wet mill and corn-dry mill in commercial fuel ethanol production.

"The NCERC will serve a major role in commercializing new technologies for producing ethanol more cost effectively from corn," Bothast said. He explained there have been promising efforts to find efficient production methods, but these results have not been tested on a large scale. "Until now, these results have not been tested because of the prohibitive costs and the risks behind injecting an exploratory technology into an existing, large-scale, commercial facility," he said.

Bothast pointed out that the center also will allow for finding ways to add value to co-products from the ethanol process. "Researchers are working to come up with better technologies to break down corn and its co-products to make the process economically sound," Bothast said.

"The NCERC will advance the role of bioconversion by developing and demonstrating the next generation of advanced technologies, making possible low-cost and sustainable biobased industrial products, biofuels, and biopower," Bothast said. "Since 1980, fuel ethanol production has been increasing annually and has reached 2.7 billion gallons this year from more than one billion bushels of corn grown in the United States.

"We expect to go to five billion gallons a year in 10 years if we are to meet the renewable fuel goals of this country."

U.S. Navy to Produce its Own Biodiesel—Alternative Fuel Helps Strengthen U.S. Energy Security, Protect the Environment

The largest diesel fuel user in the world is making a significant move in the drive for domestic energy security. On October 30th, at Naval Base Ventura County (NBVC) in Port Hueneme, Calif., U.S. Navy leaders announced plans to recycle the Navy's used cooking oil by processing it into cleaner burning biodiesel for use in its diesel vehicles. Biodiesel is an established, commercially available fuel that works in any diesel engine, and the Department of Energy calls it the fastest growing alternative fuel in America.

The Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center (NFESC) is partnering with Santa Barbara-based Biodiesel Industries, Inc., a biodiesel manufacturer and technology provider. Using a modular biodiesel processing unit, the base will collect its used cooking oil and transform it into biodiesel through a chemical process known as transesterification. Biodiesel can be made from any fat or vegetable oil, such as soybean oil. It's nontoxic, biodegradable and works in any diesel engine with few or no modifications. Although biodiesel contains no petroleum, it can be blended with petroleum diesel at any level, the most common blend level being 20 percent biodiesel mixed with 80 percent diesel (B20). The U.S. Military is one of the largest users of B20, but this is the first attempt to create a self-sustaining plant. If the project is successful, ultimately the Navy could send portable biodiesel processing units overseas to produce its own fuel while on missions abroad.

"This is a win-win," said Kurt Buehler, Chemical Engineer at NFESC. "By producing our own biodiesel from used cooking oil, we can eliminate a solid waste disposal problem on bases. In return, our diesel vehicles will burn cleaner, and we'll be using less foreign oil."

"I think it is significant to note that the Navy is charged with protecting shipping routes to import petroleum to the United States," said Joe Jobe, executive director of the nonprofit National Biodiesel Board. "I admire the military leaders who have the foresight to use their existing resources to create cleaner burning biodiesel. The Navy is the largest diesel fuel user in the world, and they're working proactively and creatively to use more renewable fuel. It's truly groundbreaking."

A Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for the Biodiesel Production Plant Validation Program was held on Thursday, October 30, at 2:00 p.m. at the demonstration site on NBVC in Port Hueneme.

The demonstration validation plant's annual capacity is one million gallons. The base plans on using 20,000 gallons a year. Nearby Channel Islands National Park, which has used biodiesel for several years to help meet its goal of making the islands petroleum-free, will use 20,000 gallons a year. Ventura County will also use 20,000 gallons annually. The U.S. currently imports approximately 60 percent of its oil -- of that, 800,000 barrels of oil a day come from Iraq.

"If you look at what it costs to send a gallon of diesel overseas, there is a potential to reduce the logistics tail when deploying since we're already sending vegetable oil overseas anyway to cook for the troops," Buehler said. "It also gives us energy security for Navy bases. If petroleum gets cut off, we can keep the base running on biodiesel. So in addition to reducing dependence on foreign oil, producing our own biodiesel could provide a tactical advantage in case of crisis."

"This is the culmination of four years of working with the U.S. Navy," said Russell Teall, president of Biodiesel Industries. "Our research and development of the Modular Production Unit has been completed and implemented in our civilian plants in Las Vegas and Australia. Now, with the cooperation of NFESC we hope to continue making improvements so that it can soon be deployed at military installations around the world."

The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all use B20 at different bases and stations throughout the country, including: Camp Lejeune U.S. Marine Corps Base in North Carolina; Air Force Space Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Fort Leonard Wood Army Base in Missouri. Everett Naval Station, located in the Puget Sound area, has used about 50 thousand gallons of B20 a year since 2001. The switch to biodiesel was virtually seamless, according to Transportation Director Gary Passmore. "Older equipment took a filter change, but newer equipment needed nothing," he said. "It went so smooth that no one really noticed."

Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have completed the rigorous Health Effects testing required by the Clean Air Act. Results show biodiesel poses less of a risk to human health than petroleum diesel. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a comprehensive technical report of biodiesel emissions data that shows the exhaust emissions of particulate matter from pure biodiesel are about 47 percent lower than overall particulate matter emissions from diesel. Breathing particulate has been shown to be a human health hazard. Biodiesel emissions also reduce by 80 to 90 percent potential cancer causing compounds called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) and nitrated PAH. Biodiesel also reduces emissions of total unburned hydrocarbons, a contributing factor to smog and ozone, by about 68 percent. Carbon monoxide is reduced by about 48 percent.

Biodiesel has similar horsepower, torque and BTU content compared to petroleum diesel. It offers excellent lubricity and higher cetane than diesel fuel. Biodiesel is registered with the EPA as a fuel and fuel additive. About 350 major fleets currently use biodiesel nationwide.

For more information contact Jenna Higgins/NBB, (800) 841-5849, Kurt Buehler/US Navy, 805-982-4886, Russ Teall/Biodiesel Industries, 805-689-9008.

Nutraceuticals for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

The purpose of this paper is to summarize certain scientific and legal issues regarding the chemical compounds known as nutraceuticals. The topic is timely because consumer interest in the relationship between diet and health is high, yet media reports about the consequences of certain food compounds may confuse not only consumers but also health professionals. This paper provides background information about nutraceuticals and related products; addresses the regulation of nutraceuticals; discusses scientific issues including safety, efficacy, processing, and plant production; and offers policy and research recommendations.

A rapidly growing focus of research and product development, nutraceuticals are of interest to individuals studying human health and nutrition, agriculture, food science, plant and animal genomics, and molecular biology. In agricultural and biomedical research, functional foods and health-protecting materials (i.e., nutraceuticals including phytochemicals and botanicals) are perceived as offering some of the greatest opportunities for improving human health. Diet-related chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and arteriosclerosis result in an estimated annual loss to the U.S. economy of more than $70 billion in medical and productivity costs, not counting premature deaths associated with these illnesses. Numerous epidemiological studies suggest that the risks for many chronic diseases are diet related and could be decreased significantly through the change of dietary habits. Consumers' demand for functional foods and interest in self-medication will fuel markets for these products as U.S. health care costs continue to exceed $1 trillion annually.

Since ancient times, humankind has relied on foods for the prevention and treatment of disease. Recently, however, by recommending a healthy, balanced diet, medical science is returning to an interest in disease prevention. New evidence indicates that foods contain numerous naturally occurring health protectants that assist in the prevention of human chronic diseases.

The benefits to humans of future research on nutraceuticals was recognized in the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, which stated that five of the ten leading causes of death in the United States are diet-related diseases, including certain types of cancer, coronary heart diseases, and diabetes mellitus (U.S. Surgeon General 1988). These five diseases, responsible for approximately two-thirds of the more than two million deaths annually in the United States, also cause diminished productivity, economic hardship, and suffering. Other illnesses and conditions such as arthritis and obesity have exacted additional tolls from the U.S. economy and from the quality of life of residents. The growing field of nutragenomics (also referred to as nutrigenomics), which evaluates the effects of nutrients and nutraceuticals on gene expression, may in the future lead to dietary recommendations to prevent or to treat disease.

Definitions. The White House's 1969 Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health often is acknowledged as the first official recognition by the U.S. government that diet, and specifically food components, can affect health. By the mid-1980's , food processors (most notably Kellogg, with its bran cereal campaign) and the National Cancer Institute, which had begun promoting a diet of high-fiber foods for the prevention of colorectal cancer, began marketing jointly certain foods on the basis of health benefits.

This focus on health-protectant food components generated a variety of vocabulary terms. Functional foods, designed foods, and nutraceuticals are some of the terms that have been developed to identify the existence of foods and food components with health-enhancing or disease-preventive properties. Scientific focus on the identification of health-protectant components within food and their mechanism(s) of action, such as beta-glucan in oat bran, directs attention to the term nutraceuticals rather than to the whole-food concepts implicit in a term such as functional foods. Nutraceuticals are nutrients and non-nutrient compounds in food that have health-promoting, disease-preventive, or medicinal properties. The role of nutrients in health is evolving beyond the classic nutritional role of preventing deficiencies that was the focus of research in the twentieth century. Nutraceuticals can be purified to make a dietary supplement or added to a processed food to increase the amount of nutrients and non-nutrient compounds in the diet. Foods containing physiologically active components that have a health benefit beyond basic nutrition are also called functional foods.

In the United States, the terms "functional foods," "nutraceuticals," and other related terms have no legal or regulatory identity in food and drug law. The U.S. Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) regulates dietary supplements as foods, not as food additives, and does define dietary supplements as "vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, or other dietary substances for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake, including concentrates, metabolites, constituents, extracts, or any combination of the above." Discerning dietary supplements from nutraceuticals is not always simple.

Scope of the Market. Nutraceuticals are part of a $53 billion U.S. nutrition industry composed of several relevant segments. The value of the U.S. nutraceutical and functional foods segment was estimated at $20.6 billion in 2002, or a 9.1% increase since 2001. This increase compares with growth rates of 3% and 3.5% for conventional foods and dietary supplements, respectively. Dietary supplement sales grew at a rate of approximately 1.3% from 2001 to 2002, but certain product categories experienced a significant decline in sales. The nutraceutical industry, which is perceived as consumer driven, must meet several conditions to continue expansion. These conditions include

The primary consumers of nutraceuticals come from a range of backgrounds but often are female, well educated, reasonably affluent, and middle aged (35 to 55 years). Product development tends to follow the scientific discoveries and health states that preoccupy consumers. Scientific consensus recognized by a formal U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-accepted health claim for cardiovascular health and the calcium osteoporosis claim, is believed to be a marketing advantage; therefore, companies have targeted product development and reformation to use health claims and nutrient content claims on their food labels. This phenomenon emphasizes the intimate and interconnected relationships among nutraceutical discovery and documentation, product development, regulatory policy, and consumer behavior.

The mission of the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) is to assemble, interpret, and communicate science-based information regionally, nationally, and internationally on food, fiber, agricultural, natural resource, and related societal and environmental issues to our stakeholders-legislators, regulators, policymakers, the media, the private sector, and the public. CAST is a nonprofit organization composed of 37 scientific societies and many individual, student, company, nonprofit, and associate society members. CAST's Board of Directors is composed of representatives of the scientific societies and individual members, and an Executive Committee. CAST was established in 1972 as a result of a meeting sponsored in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council.

Copies of the full paper are available for $5.00 from the CAST, 4420 West Lincoln Way, Ames, Iowa, 50014-3447, phone +1 515 292 2125, fax +1 515 292 4512, email cast@cast-science.org.

Renewable Energy Group Honors Texans—Legislators and Industry Leaders Awarded for Efforts in 2003

The Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association (TREIA) is honoring Texas Representatives Phil King and David Swinford as well as City Public Service of San Antonio, Cielo Wind Power, Green Mountain Energy Company and TXU Energy for their outstanding work on behalf of renewable energy development in Texas for 2003.

TREIA will present a Legislator for the Year Award to Rep. Phil King (R), Weatherford, TX for his efforts in filing and passing HB 2548 requiring adjustments to the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) rules that will help the State meet it's renewable energy goal and reduce renewable energy transmission constraints.

Rep. David Swinford (R), Dumas, TX will be a TREIA Legislator of the Year Award recipient for his labors in authoring and securing passage of measures, as part of SB 275, creating an incentive program for the production of renewable liquid fuels ethanol and biodiesel in Texas.

TREIA's Governmental Program of the Year Award is going to City Public Service of San Antonio for announcing an official policy which commits the utility to strive to at least double its current 160 megawatts of renewable capacity in the next 10 years and setting an aggressive and ambitious goal of meeting 10 percent of CPS demand with renewables by 2015.

The Green Mountain Energy® Wind Farm at Brazos, project participants Green Mountain Energy, Cielo Wind Power, LLC, and TXU Energy, have been chosen for the TREIA Project of the Year Award. This 160 MW wind farm is the largest renewable energy project in Texas to be undertaken in 2003. The project will generate energy to power 30,000 average Texas homes per year and prevent an estimated 360,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from entering the atmosphere each year.

Every year TREIA recognizes elected officials, industry leaders and TREIA volunteers for outstanding performance in promoting or implementing renewable energy for Texas. The ceremony is in conjunction with the San Antonio Energy Leadership/Texas Renewables '03 Conference which was held at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio November 20 through 22.

The conference combines the 19th Annual Meeting of TREIA and the 1st Annual Meeting of the Metropolitan Partnership for Energy (MPE). It is co-hosted with Solar San Antonio, a chapter of the Texas Solar Energy Society. TREIA presented the awards during a luncheon at the Gunter Hotel Friday, November 21.

For more information, visit www.sanantonioenergyleadership.org, or contact Russel E. Smith +1 512-345-5446.

New Tool Helps Producers Assess Ethanol Plant Impact

A Web-based tool to help farmers and ranchers assess potential price impacts of a new ethanol production plant has been developed by two Montana State University professors, with funding support from Farm Foundation.

The Ethanol Plant Analyzer allows farmers to run what-if scenarios on how the size and location of an ethanol plant might impact local corn prices. It was developed by Kevin McNew and Duane Griffith, Extension Specialists in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State. The Analyzer is located at: http://www.extensionecon.montana.edu/eplantanalyzer/.

More than 70 ethanol plants currently operate in the U.S. and more are under construction. Many are farmer-owned. While ethanol supplies are currently abundant, the outlook is promising for increased demand. The renewable fuels standard provision of the energy bill now before Congress could potentially double the use of ethanol by 2012. Declining use of MTBE, ethanol's major competitor, would also support ethanol demand growth.

"Increased demand for ethanol appears promising, but we already have capacity to produce more than 2 billion gallons per year," says Walter Armbruster, President of Farm Foundation. "It is important that farmers and managers understand the risks of this business."

"This project helps farmers, cooperative managers and policy makers better understand the economics of ethanol plants and the role of policies in the future development of the ethanol industry," explains McNew.

The Analyzer builds on research McNew has done based on date from 316 grain markets around 12 ethanol plants that opened in 2001 and 2002. Here are some of the findings:

To use the Ethanol Plant Analyzer, select a potential location for the plant, as well as the plant size. The program will list in miles the area impacted by the plant, as well as the maximum impact in cents per bushel. The same information is also provided for specific locations around the proposed plant site. For example, a 45 million gallon per year plant located in northwestern Coffey County, Kan., would have a maximum price of 14.9¢ across an area of 122 miles. In Atchinson, Kan., 88 miles from the plant, the impact would be 14.9¢. In Bern, Kan., 108 miles from the plant, the impact would be 4.9¢. The Analyzer can map its findings-locations with the highest impact are in green, with the least impact in red.

McNew and Griffith plan to expand the Analyzer to include transportation issues and further details on siting a new plant.

Farm Foundation is a publicly supported, nonprofit organization working to improve the economic health of agriculture and the well-being of people in rural America. It does this by identifying forces shaping the productivity and competitiveness of agriculture and the food system; translating research-based knowledge into practical tools for increasing human capital; and promoting informed dialogue on important public issues.

For more information, contact Mary Thompson, at +1 630 571-9393, or mary@farmfoundation.org; or contact Kevin McNew, Montana State University, +1 406 994-7816, kmcnew@montana.edu.

Greenhouse Gas Technology Verification Center

The Environmental Technology Verification Center (ETV) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Technology Center, located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is a public/private partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Southern Research Institute. The GHG Center is one of several verification centers throughout the country that operates under the EPA's ETV program. These ETV centers address different pollution areas like wastewater, solid waste, air pollution, and greenhouse gases.

Since 1997, the GHG Center has located promising new and innovative technologies having the potential to mitigate, monitor, or sequester GHG emissions (and offer energy-efficient system operations). These technologies are subjected to independent third-party performance testing, and performance results provided to the public free of charge. Verification projects typically focus on efficiency (electrical, power, heat) and emissions. The program can fund up to 50 percent of the costs for technology verification.

ETV does not rank technologies, compare technical performance, label or list technologies as acceptable or unacceptable, seek to determine "best available technology," or approve or disapprove technologies. Verification activities are announced in relevant publications, and on the ETV website and ETV listserv.

The GHG Center depends upon stakeholder groups to provide input regarding high-priority technologies that should be pursued for verification purposes. These stakeholders: (1) represent the industry; (2) have chosen to voluntarily participate in steering the group towards technologies of interest to them; and (3) are very knowledgeable about the types of innovative technologies that end-users (like utilities and industries) are considering for economic, technical, and environmental reasons.

One of these stakeholder groups is the "Advanced Energy Stakeholder" group. This group consists of about 40 people from universities, vendors, regulators, government, funding agencies, organizations, and utilities. Participants include representatives from Bowman Power Systems, Duke Energy, Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), California Energy Commission, E Source, Canadian Climate Change Secretariat, Pennsylvania Sustainable Energy Funds, Massachusetts Trust Fund, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), North Carolina State University (animal waste issues), Portland General Electric, Tampa Electric, TVA, US DOE, US EPA, Indiana Distributed Generation Grant Program, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority, CONEG Policy Research Center, STM Power, Inc., Southern States Energy Board, and United Technology Corporation (UTC).

The benefit to the stakeholders is the ability to collaborate on new and innovative technologies (i.e., fuel cells, microturbines, reciprocating engines, Stirling engines, photovoltaics, wind, bio-fuels, animal waste utilization, landfill gas recovery, carbon sequestration, power inverters, power plant efficiency improvements, hybrid systems) and steer funding/testing towards their own interests. Stakeholders can learn about new technologies, recommend their needs and requirements, define parameters needing to be verified and tested, share testing and information with others, and get end users together with suppliers and vendors. Information exchange of everything dealing with these new technologies that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions is important to the stakeholders. Technical issues, economics, policy issues, and collaboration are the focus.

Technology performance verifications are accomplished using measurement and analytical methods that have been reviewed and approved by independent expert stakeholder panels. To date, the GHG Center has completed or initiated the verifications of 23 different environmental technologies.

For technologies that perform well, ETV verification can help increase technology sales and further environmental protection. The information from the Center assists technology purchasers to make wise purchase decisions, vendors to obtain independent confirmation of their technology's performance, and superior environmental technologies to penetrate the market place.

The GHG Center has partnered with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to verify the following technologies: Plug Power PEM fuel cell; Capstone Turbine Corporation 60 kW microturbine CHP system; Ingersoll-Rand Energy System PowerWorks™ microturbine CHP system; Capstone Turbine Corporation 30-kW microturbine CHP system, and UTC Fuel Cells phosphoric acid fuel cell.

For additional information contact Stephen Piccot at the Southern Research Institute +1 919 806-3456, email piccot@sri-rtp.com, website www.sri-rtp.com, or David Kirchgessner at EPA +1 919-541 4021, email kirchgessner.david@epa.gov, website www.epa.gov/etv.

Pollution Can Be Stopped Naturally!

Children living around rice mills have suffered with skin and eye irritation for many years. Doctors were baffled over the source of the ailment until they managed to trace the cause to smoke and particulate created from the open burning of rice husks.

Huge rice husk mountains were built by the mills and these mountains were continuously being burned to make more room for husk disposal. "What seems like a harmless running nose or minor skin irritation in the beginning can cause chronic lung diseases", warned State Health and Medical Services officers.

Rice husks, straw and other high silica materials contain tiny asbestos-like silica fibers. Uncontrolled burning of these wastes releases billions of these dangerous fibers into the atmosphere. These tiny fibers are invisible, insoluble and build up in the lungs causing chronic lung disease and possibly cancer. Recent research has led to the banning of open burning of rice husk and straw in some countries of the world.

In order to stop this hazardous pollution around rice mills and to utilize rice husks for energy, eighteen PRME NaturallyGas™ rice husk energy conversion systems have been installed in Asia, Australia, Latin America and the U.S. These installations are located in remote rural agricultural areas and supply clean heat for rice drying, steam for processing and electricity for the local rice mills. In addition to gasifying husks directly from the mills, PRME installed several husk reclaiming systems to bring the mountains of husk to the PRME gasification system to be converted to clean energy.

Open burning at these rice mill complexes has stopped. The mountains of husks are gone. PRME customers are using rice husks for clean energy instead of fossil fuels. Area residents, farmers and their families and mill workers are enjoying a cleaner healthier environment. PRME customers say, "the effectiveness of the PRME system cannot be denied."

PRM Energy Systems, Inc., a U.S. renewable energy technology company, recognized the serious health problems associated with open burning and developed the technology for safely and cleanly converting these wastes to clean, hot combustible gas in an environmentally sound manner. The PRME NaturallyGas™ is used like natural gas to direct fire boilers, dryers, kilns, IC engines and gas turbines to produce clean heat, steam and electricity. The PRME Rice Husk Gasification technology has proven to be reliable, economical, efficient and environmentally sound during over 22 years of successful performance in demanding industrial applications. The long-term benefits of the PRME system are rural development, job opportunities for rural youth, reliable energy for rural industrialization, additional income for farmers, urban to rural migration and a clean healthy environment for all.

For more information, contact PRM Energy Systems, Inc., 504 Windamere Terrace, Hot Springs, Arkansas 71913 USA, Phone:+1 501 767-2100, Fax:+1 501 767-6968, Email: info@prmenergy.com , or Web, http://www.prmenergy.com.

Springfield Cofires Obsolete Seed Corn

Springfield City Water, Light, and Power (CWLP) in Illinois has been cofiring obsolete seed corn in its two 80 MW cyclone units on an experimental basis. Seed corn becomes obsolete when it's past its germination date or a new hybrid has been developed to replace it.

Seed corn provides only a small amount of fuel in comparison to the 1 million tons of coal consumed per year by CWLP and, with 7,200 Btu/lb, has less energy per pound than coal at 10,500 Btu/lb. However, the price of obsolete seed corn is an attractive $3.50 per ton or $0.24 per million Btu. The utility is presently paying $22.50 per ton for coal, or $1.07 per million Btu.

Cofiring testing ended at CWLP about a year ago. Since then, seed corn has been cofired on an irregular basis at two units at the Lakeside Power Station, and two of the three units at the Dallman Power station, including a 200-MW unit a Dallman. So far this year, about 4,400 tons of corn have been used by the utility.

Due to the success of the test burns, the Springfield City Council recently voted to continue the project by allowing CWLP to spend $70,000 to buy up to 20,000 more tons of corn over the next three years.

CWLP was originally approached about the project by Eco-Logic Services, a company headquartered in Randolph, Minnesota, that buys seed the agriculture industry considers obsolete. The company has a storage operation in Streator, Illinois, which is where most of CWLP's corn will be delivered from.

In addition to cost, the corn burns cleaner than coal. For example, CWLP has observed slight reductions in SOx emissions.

Although burning more corn would save on fuel costs and further decrease emissions, due to the lower Btu rating of the corn, increasing its use would reduce the output of the power plant.

The utility has also investigated cofiring wood chips obtained at no cost from the city's public works department. However, CWLP says that preparing the wood and modifying the power plants to allow the use of wood would be cost prohibitive. Conversely, seed corn requires no preparation before its use.

Funding Sources

DOE Gasification Solicitation. On October 28th, 2003, DOE issued a solicitation for gasification technologies. To review the solicitation announcement, please visit http://www.fedgrants.gov/Applicants/DOE/PAM/HQ/DE-PS26-04NT41898-06/listing.html for details on the solicitation including proposal areas. Follow the links to view the GRANT posting.

If the above link does not work, then please try https://www.e-center.doe.gov/iips/

The contact for this solicitation is Jodi Collins with DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory. Ms. Collins can be reached at +1 304-285-1390, or at jodi.collins@netl.doe.gov. Eligible applicants are state controlled institutions of higher education and private institutions of higher education. It is estimated that a total of approximately $3M will be available to fund 14 to 18 projects at $50K to $400K each. The duration of each project is expected to be 2 to 3 years.

Illinois DCEO Renewable Energy Grants. Illinois' Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) has recently released RFPs and application materials for its renewable energy grant programs.

One of these programs provides support for a wide range of renewable energy technologies from smaller-scale wind to biomass to solar hot water. The grant awards range from 25-50% of project cost with maximum grants of $50,000-500,000 (based on the renewable system used). The application deadline for this program is December 22, 2003.

To apply for this program, you must be located in the service territory of an Illinois investor-owned utility.

Information on these programs is available on the DCEO website www.commerce.state.il.us or by contacting Rex Buhrmester in DCEO's Division of Energy at +1 217-557-1925.