Cellulosic ethanol documentary wins ADDY Award

You can now add "Award Winning" to the title of the documentary on our cellulosic ethanol pilot project. This past weekend, the South Dakota Advertising Federation held their annual ADDY award ceremony and our documentary won "Best of Show" in the electronic category. Here's a short preview:

POET Nutrition won a few awards for their marketing as well. Click here for the full list of winner. We're so proud!

Ag Energy: On to the Next Level

Would you like even more information about Project LIBERTY?  Do you have questions about corn cob harvesting?  Are you wondering what it all will mean to Emmetsburg and to you?  I will address these questions and more at a one-day conference called "Ag Energy 2009: On to the Next Level," Wednesday, March 11, at the Wild Rose Casino, Emmetsburg, Iowa.  I am scheduled to speak at 12:15.  Other scheduled speakers include:

• Denny Harding, Iowa Farm Bureau Federation
• Norman Olson, Biomass Energy Conversion Facility
• Dr. Bruce Wicking, Cellencor Corporation
• Dr. Lawrence Johnson,  Center for Crops Utilization Research
• Ross Groffman, NextEra Energy Resources
• Mark Kingland, Alliant Energy
• Teresa Bornhoff, USDA Rural Development

The Kossuth/Palo Alto County Economic Development Corporation will host the meeting.  Registration opens at 8:15 a.m.  Cost is $20 per person until March 1st; afterward the fee is $25 per person.  Students may attend for $15.00.  All registrations include lunch and publications.  For more information about the conference, please contact Maureen Elbert, Economic Director, at 515-295-7979 or email: kcedc@kossuthia.com

LIBERTY Q's and A's at the Alternative Energy Seminar

I spoke about POET Project LIBERTY at the Alternative Energy Seminar, a one-day meeting in Sheldon, Iowa sponsored by Northwestern Iowa Community College and Northwestern Iowa Development on Feb. 16. Over 130 people attended, many of which were farmers from the area. Some had attended Project LIBERTY Field Day in Emmetsburg in November. I showed the Project LIBERTY video and gave a status of the project, including a recap of the 2008 cob harvest and plans for the 2009 cob harvest. While still at the podium, I fielded several questions from the attendees. Here they are along with my answers:

Q. Will farmers need to add nutrients and fertilizers to the soil to compensate for cob removal?

A. POET is collaborating with Iowa State University on a robust agronomics study that addresses this head on. However, previous studies have shown that the cob contains only2 to 6 percent of the nutrients in the corn stover. Other studies indicated that decomposition of cobs left on the field removes nitrogen from the soil, and this may actually inhibit plant growth.

Q. What will be the price of the new equipment for cob harvesting?

A. Equipment companies have not yet set prices. The technology is evolving rapidly and most of the equipment used in 2008 was prototypes. The equipment that will be used for the 2009 harvest will be leased.

Q. How many pounds of cobs can be expected from a bushel of corn

A. Average cob yields have been 0.6 to 0.7 bone dry tons per acre. At 0.6 tons per acre (1200 pounds) in 180 bushel corn, you will get 6.66 pounds of cobs per bushel of corn.

Q. What does it cost POET to make a gallon of cellulosic ethanol in the pilot plant?

A. Currently, costs are about $1 gallon more than the cost of producing a gallon of grain-based ethanol and the costs are coming down. We are in the early stages of development, we are learning more every day, and the process we developed at the lab scale works at the pilot scale. We are encouraged by the progress. For more on the pilot plant, see Dr. Mark Stowers' recent update.

We'll be speaking about Project LIBERTY at several more events in Northwest Iowa over the next few weeks, so if you have questions that weren't answered here, be sure to show up. Or, you could always ask them in the comment section.

An update on POET's Cellulosic Ethanol Process

The New York Times had an update on the cellulosic ethanol industry today, pointing out the struggles that many companies are having. As the head of Research at POET, I thought I'd post a quick update regarding where we are on our cellulosic project.

As regular readers of this blog will know, we recently opened our pilot plant in Scotland, S.D. that is making cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs. After a few months of operating our pilot facility, we’ve been able to confirm that the process we developed in the lab works at pilot scale. We’ve had to do some debugging with downstream processing, managing our recycle loops, etc., but there have been surprisingly few difficult issues.

Our focus now is on reducing costs and making the process cost competitive with grain ethanol. We estimate that our current production cost of cellulosic ethanol is $1 more per gallon and that it will be $0.50 more by the time we start up our first commercial-scale plant in 2011.

We have been given assurances by our enzyme partners (as recently as yesterday) that they will continue to reduce their costs and we believe the same is true for manufacturers of the micro-organisms. Simultaneously, we are working with farmers and agricultural equipment manufacturers to develop the machinery, equipment and market conditions for the delivery of corn cobs to the biorefinery. We were also encouraged by a new report out of Sandia National Laboratory, showing that there is enough feedstock to produce 75 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year (pdf summary).

The primary remaining barrier is regulatory. As POET CEO Jeff Broin mentioned in the Times, we have to move the base blend of ethanol from E10 to E15 or E20 in order for there to be a market for cellulosic ethanol. With this regulatory cap there is no room for current ethanol production capacity, let alone future capacity. If the country wants a thriving cellulosic ethanol industry, it’s crucial that there is a market available for the product.

Our development of cellulosic ethanol production is not slowed by the current economic conditions because we have always taken the long view. Our research and development of cellulosic ethanol started nine years ago and we now have the confidence in our technology to move forward. To keep informed on the project, just visit the web site.

Iowa appearances

POETs will participate in several upcoming conferences in Northwestern Iowa to talk about Project LIBERTY. You can read the release on our web site. Here's the list:

- On February 16, Project LIBERTY Director Jim Sturdevant will speak at the Alternative Energy Seminar in Sheldon, Iowa.
- On February 17, POET will have a booth at Ag Outlook in Spencer, Iowa
- On February 26, Biomass Manager BJ Schany will speak at the Global Agricultural Conference in Spencer, Iowa
- Finally, on March 11, Sturdevant will speak at 2009 Ag Energy Day in Emmetsburg, Iowa

If you're in the area and want to learn more about Project LIBERTY, feel free to stop by.

CNNMoney covers POET Cellulosic project

POET recently announced the start of cellulosic ethanol production from corn cobs at our pilot facility in Scotland, S.D. Poppy Harlow of CNNMoney covered the announcement which you can watch on their web site: Ethanol From Waste.

You can find more news coverage like this on the news page of our web site. Our you can grab our news RSS feed. We also post TV news coverage (when the media outlet allows us) on POET TV.