2011 Harvest in the Books

The 2011 harvest has been completed and saw farrmers around Emmetsburg, Iowa collect 61,000 bone-dry tons of corn cobs and high cut material. POET Regional Biomass Coordinator Adam Wirt was in Fort Dodge, Iowa yesterday for the Farm News Ag Show to update local farmers on our progress.

As you can see from this harvest photo taken near Emmetsburg, there is still plenty of cover on the field after the crop residue is baled. The amount of stover in those fields ensures that the harvest of crop residue can be sustainable.

Once BCAP is straightened out, these bales will be delivered to the stack yard in Emmetsburg and many will end up in South Dakota where they will be converted to cellulosic ethanol in our pilot plant or power for POET Biorefining - Chancellor. Another harvest brings us that much closer to our goal of producing cellulosic ethanol at the commercial scale.

POET CEO on Cellulosic Progress

During Trade Talk at the annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB), POET Founder & CEO Jeff Broin talked with several farm broadcasters. He's pictured here in one of those many interviews.

One of those interviews was with Jody Heemstra of KWAT Radio in Watertown, S.D. Domestic Fuel got a copy of the seven minute interview and posted it on their blog.

Broin talked about the recently completed corn corn crop residue harvest said that POET has made "tremendous strides" developing commercial cellulosic ethanol. He also talked about how POET will integrate cellulosic ethanol production with its existing corn ethanol plants and the benefits that will bring to both processes.

In-Line with LIBERTY: Wisconsin's Report on Sustainable Biomass

When it comes to biofuels, there are three things in which I believe: First, biomass for biofuels has enormous potential as a primary piece of our nation’s energy program. Second, corn crop residue is one of the best types of biomass for biofuel production—it’s available in large quantities. And thirdly, corn crop residue can be—and must be—harvested in environmentally sustainable ways.

So, I was gratified to learn that officials in the State of Wisconsin share my beliefs. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the University of Wisconsin, and their partners recently published the Wisconsin Sustainable Planting and Harvesting Guidelines for Nonforest Biomass.

The report, which details voluntary guidelines for sustainable biomass planting and harvesting, states that corn stover makes up more than half of all crop residues in the US and is considered the most available for bioenergy purposes.

Based on current scientific knowledge vetted through scientific review and public comments, the report says, “without specific field-based assessment (e.g. a conservation plan), remove only 25% of stover to maintain soil organic carbon levels and structural stability.” Depending on soil type, even more corn crop reside can be removed while maintaining good soil conditions.

This is great news! Farmers participating in POET Project LIBERTY are right in step, harvesting about 1 bone dry ton of corn crop residue per acre, which is about 25% of the available stover per acre in the Emmetsburg, Iowa area.

POET encourages participating farmers to practice good conservation planning and follow the guidelines of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Again, Wisconsin is in alignment. Its report says that site-specific stubble height, residual cover and stover removal rates should be determined using soil conservation planning tools available from the USDA NRCS.

POET’s biomass harvest guidelines have been supported by multiple years of research conducted by Iowa State University. We now welcome Wisconsin’s support! My beliefs are solid.

Cellulosic ethanol report reinforces the value of research, partnerships in commercialization

Yesterday’s report from the National Research Council on cellulosic ethanol production devotes about 100 pages to the environmental effects of cellulosic ethanol.

To sum up the findings: There are right and wrong ways to produce cellulosic ethanol, and the environmental benefits depend on which path you choose.

This is not a revelation. POET has always endorsed a cautious approach to commercialization. It’s amusing that we get questions one day asking “Are you moving too quickly to understand the environmental effects?” and the next “Why is cellulosic ethanol taking so long to commercialize?”

POET’s Project LIBERTY will use corn cobs, leaves, husk, and stalk to produce cellulosic ethanol, so I paid more attention to those sections dealing with POET’s process. One such section asserts:

“Corn stover, cereal straw, and other crop residues draw on existing crops so that their use as a bioenergy feedstock under best management practices might not contribute much additional GHG emissions. However, overharvesting of crop residues could result in additional need for agrichemical inputs and the loss of soil organic matter, which is critical for maintaining soil structure and water retention capacity and for improving nutrient cycling and other soil processes.”

POET agrees completely. This material is not “crop waste,” as some would assert. Stover plays a valuable role in soil health, and that’s something that POET is carefully monitoring through work with USDA-ARS and Iowa State University. This fall marks the fourth year of an ongoing study into effects of stover harvesting on soil in the Emmetsburg, Iowa area. This is information we share with the public. Download the latest results here.

POET contracts with farmers for no more than 20-25 percent of the above-ground biomass, which is on the low end of what that data shows is available for use. There are a few ways to ensure this limit is followed:

- Farmers want to protect their livelihood, the grain harvest, so they don’t want to take too much.

- POET representatives visit the fields of participating farmers during the harvest to make sure things are going as planned.

- To take more biomass, the harvest equipment is set lower to the ground, picking up extra dirt, rocks, and other debris. This additional material would cause the biomass to be outside of POET’s quality standards.

The pace moving from lab scale to pilot scale to commercial construction has been steady, with many checkpoints along the way. No one’s rushing into this without assessing the impacts.

A couple other points I want to address from the study:

1. Economics: There’s been a big to-do about the study’s conclusion that there’s a significant “price gap” between what companies will pay for biomass and what farmers will accept in order to harvest it.

We don’t go into specifics on our arrangements with farmers, because the biomass market is still developing. I will say this: Their assumptions are not consistent with the actual first-hand experience of POET signing contracts and working with farmers.

2. The report asserts that corn stover will be an early feedstock and that if done properly, it is positive for the environment. It then notes that the entire 16 billion gallons in the Renewable Fuel Standard can’t be met with stover alone.

Maybe I missed it, but it seems to me that the report doesn’t make clear just how much of that 16 billion gallons could come from crop residue. I think that’s an important point to note.

POET’s model has a cellulosic ethanol plant sited next to a grain-based ethanol plant. The cellulosic ethanol plant is half the size of the adjacent facility.

That means POET’s model, if applied across the industry could do roughly 6 or 7 billion gallons of the 16 billion gallons. That’s pretty significant, and from some of the reports I’ve seen, that number is on the low end of the potential.

What do we do with all those bales?

If you've been reading this blog, you know that we've collected a lot corn crop residue around Emmetsburg, Iowa over the past couple of years. Some of it has been going to our pilot plant in Scotland, S.D.

However, the pilot plant has a capacity to process one ton per day and last fall we collected 56,000 tons. Do the math and you'll discover that it would take more than 150 years for the pilot plant to process all of that corn crop residue.

That's why much of the residue has been making it's way to our waste-powered ethanol plant in Chancellor, S.D. At POET Biorefining - Chancellor, we have a solid fuel boiler that produces steam for the plant by burning biomass in a 22' x 16' x 65' combustion chamber.

But before it comes to Chancellor, the bales have to be ground up and that's where a new partnership with the Sioux Falls landfill comes into play. It was in the long-term plans for the landfill to purchase a grinder and the revenue from grinding our corn crop residue bales allowed them to speed up the purchase. It was the subject of a story by KELO-TV, the local CBS affiliate:

You can see pictures of the grinder on our Flickr Page or watch video of it in action on POET TV.

Biofuels and Prairie Grass

Last week, I attended a public tour of the EcoSun Prairie Farm near Colman, S.D. The farm was established in 2008 to demonstrate the potential economic and ecological benefits of establishing grass-based farms in the former tall grass prairie region of central North America.

During the public tour, which was shortened by rain earlier in the day and the heat that followed, we heard from several members of the EcoSun Board who talked about the revenue streams they've established from grass-finished beef and prairie grass seed. They also talked about potential future revenue sources for the working grass farm, like carbon credits and selling biomass for cellulosic ethanol.

It's this potential to use native prairie grasses for biofuels production that has drawn POET's interest. As was mentioned in today's front page story in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, we've talked to EcoSun about the potential for a partnership.

For the most part, our research lab is through the early phase of research and developing corn crop residues for cellulosic ethanol (although the research will never really end) and is now beginning to look at what the next sources of biomass will be for cellulosic ethanol. We see a lot of promise and potential in the native prairie grasses like they grow at the EcoSun Farm. Pictured here is a stand of Sunburst Switchgrass. To see more photos, visit our Flickr page.

We'll have more to say about this at the upcoming America's Grasslands Conference that is being held in Sioux Falls, S.D. in August. You can learn more about the EcoSun Prairie Farm (and support their work) by watching Grass Roots: The Prairie Farm Story.

BCAP's Unspoken Benefits

With the future of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) up in the air due to federal budget discussions, I thought I'd point out the benefits we've seen thus far in our work on Project LIBERTY.

1) Producer Participation/Assistance/Incentive - The biggest impact that BCAP has provided is for producer incentive and assistance with getting started. The early adopters that we are working with have made a bold step in choosing to collect biomass. With no other commercial facility in the country to point to where biomass is being delivered, many farmers ask why they should do this and what their incentive is to do so. BCAP has offered financial backing to help assist producers in investing in new equipment and creating an incentive to be part of the next scope change to modern farming.

2) Rural Economic Boost - As producers have invested in new equipment and looked for additional help, the money they spend is going directly to rural communities. In Emmetsburg, people are starting up new businesses to serve the farmers in their new endeavor. In the tough economic conditions our country faces, this can make a big impact.

3) Project Growth/Stability - BCAP provides a project like ours the ability to role out a biomass collection program with more financial stability. The support funding helps limit a project's financial exposure and/or allows for project growth/expansion in the early years. In the case of LIBERTY, we have been able to spread to more farmers and actively work with them to show them how biomass collection will benefit them.

4) Environmental Re-focus - Part of the BCAP program is performing a Conservation Plan. Many of the items included in this plan are already being done by farmers today. This has provided an opportunity for the producers to re-look at how they manage their land and make sure they are performing the best practices to help them be both productive and sustainable.

5) Farm Operation Expansion/Diversity - By participating in biomass collection and BCAP, producers are expanding their operations and creating more diversity. In some instances, this has opened the door to allow another person into the operation that may not have had the opportunity or space to support them without such a program. Programs like this offer the chance for more of our farm youth to come back to the farm.

As one can see by the list above, BCAP is having many positive impacts to the producers enrolled in BCAP, the Biomass Conversion Facility supporting BCAP, and the community in which the project is being established. Further support of BCAP should continue as it will create a pathway to help establish Second-Generation Biofuels and Re-powering.

Going "Beyond the Kernel" at the International Biomass Conference

Scott Weishaar, VP of Commercial Development for POET, was at BBI International’s International Biomass Conference & Expo to talk on the panel: Beyond the Kernel: Stover Strategies for Biofuel Production. Weishaar gave an update on what POET Biomass has learned about the logistics of harvesting, transporting and storing corn cobs, leaves and husks for cellulosic ethanol production.

Here's his presentation:

Beyond the Kernel

View more presentations from POET

Ethanol Producer Magazine covered the event here. Check out our web site for more information on POET's work in cellulosic ethanol.

Tons of Biomass

As we have said in previous posts on this blog, it will take a lot of biomass to feed Project LIBERTY when it's up and running. It will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 tons to produce 25 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol each and every year.

This year was the first commercial harvest and it saw 85 farmers provide about 56,000 tons of baled corn cobs and light stover. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this picture of 24,000 tons of biomass should give you a better iead of the volume we're talking about. That's less than half of the total that was collected.

According to a study from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy, there is more than one billion tons of biomass available in the U.S. Just imagine what that pile would look like.

LIBERTY Stackyard Up and Running

We had to wait a little longer than we wanted to, but the LIBERTY stackyard has now been up and running for nearly 5-weeks. Producers around Emmetsburg were able to get their Eligible Material Owner applications approved around January 24th and start deliveries. To date, we have brought in nearly 23,000 bone-dry tons (BDT) of material. We are averaging around 900 BDT of material into the yard everyday, which will allow us to meet our need production need of 770 BDT per day. Best of all, we hit the 770 BDT mark on the second day of taking bales. This was a huge accomplishment for the team, and they have not stopped since. Our guys in the stackyard have been doing a great job and deserve a much needed pat on the back. Great Job Guys!!!

Through these first weeks of delivery, we have experienced two of the bigger challenges we were waiting for. First was the opportunity to deal with snow in the yard. The team is learning how and where to move snow when it comes. They are attacking the areas where the most work will occur and balancing that with the unloading of trucks. We found that by slowing the inbound trucks, the snow gives the guys extra time to clean up the yeard.

The second was thawing and melting. With the seasonally high temps last week, much of the snow in the area melted causing muddy conditions. As well, the frost has begun coming out of the ground and both loaders and trucks were digging down into the roads and bale rows quite a bit. As we struggled with this, we also heard about the farmers struggling too. It looks like as we turn into spring of the spring of the year, we will be able to get by working in the mornings when the ground is firm, but may need to stop in the afternoons as the ground again turns soft. This is all part of the learning process!

 
 
Along with bale deliveries, we have performed our first round of sampling on the storage study bales that are in the stackyard. We will be doing analysis on these samples to determine the dry matter losses and compositional changes in the biomass that are occurring. We will perform more samplings throughout the year to see how these parameters change over time in the bales.