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Media Relations
Kansas State University
9 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-6415
media@k-state.edu

Information provided by K-State Media Relations, K-State's news service, may be reproduced without permission. The marks and names of Kansas State University are protected trademarks and may not be used in any commercial or private endeavor without the approval of the university.

Sources: Scott Staggenborg, 785-532-7214, sstaggen@k-state.edu; Leland McKinney,
785-532-4082, lelandm@k-state.edu; Donghai Wang, 785-532-2919, dwang@k-state.edu;
and Praveen Vadlani, 785-532-5012, vadlani@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Kay Garrett, 785-532-3238, anuenue@k-state.edu

Friday, July 18, 2008

K-STATE TEAM GETS $690,000 FOR BIOFUELS PROOF OF CONCEPT STUDY ON PRODUCING CELLULOSIC ETHANOL FROM PELLETED FORAGE CROPS

MANHATTAN -- To meet a goal of replacing one-third of the nation's petroleum consumption with biofuels by the year 2030, the biomass research and development technical advisory committee of the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Energy estimates it will require growing 1 billion dry tons annually of collectable biomass and converting it to biofuels.

But critical barriers exist to producing biomass efficiently and cost-effectively. One roadblock is transportation-related and as old as agriculture: getting the crop to the market, or in this case, getting tons of biomass to the nearest storage and ethanol production facilities.

Kansas State University researchers will address logistics hurdles with a $690,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Section, in conjunction with the Department of Energy. The three-year proof-of-concept project is one of 21 research and development studies being funded to address limitations to adopting biomass for energy as national policy.

The K-State project is the first study of its kind to test the notion of making biomass pellets at or near the farm field and assessing the effect of pelletizing through to ethanol conversion. Pellet making is a mechanical, extrusion process that reduces the enormous volume of plant material.

Researchers are Scott Staggenborg, associate professor of agronomy and principal investigator; Leland McKinney, assistant professor and extension state leader in grain science and industry; Donghai Wang, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering; and Praveen Vadlani, assistant professor of grain science and industry.

The logistics piece surrounding biomass is the one thing that might keep biomass conversion from ever being as big as hoped, Staggenborg said.

"The hay paradigm won't work; that is, thinking we'll grow crops and haul plant residue to a production facility and store it," he said. "Hay handling on the massive scale that'll be needed would be a nightmare."

On the other hand, if we imagine a grain trailer filled with biomass pellets -- "now you've done something," Staggenborg said, because pellets can be transported efficiently and they also can be handled like grain with existing equipment.

The project is comprehensive, Staggenborg said. "We're taking the research upstream to assess alcohol production to make sure what our output is going to be from an energy perspective, and too, we're doing this study ahead of time, before the whole ag industry starts changing to growing crops for biofuels production."

In preliminary work in 2007, agronomists grew test plots to get an idea of how various sorghum species compare production wise to corn. They grew forage sorghum, a dual-purpose sorghum, a photoperiod sensitive sorghum and sweet sorghum, as well as big bluestem, switchgrass and a favorite European energy crop, miscanthus.

After one season, the photoperiod sensitive sorghum is showing biomass potential in the drier conditions of Kansas. Staggenborg said the plant, which is like bamboo in appearance, is "unbelievable" in terms of its vegetative or biomass production, and that it never puts on a head of grain. Sweet sorghum also excelled in the 2007 trials, he said.

The K-State project will compare sorghums and other feedstocks to corn, a kind of common currency among farmers in the Midwest and Great Plains.

"Farmers know growing conditions for corn," Staggenborg said. "So, when I tell them our photoperiod sensitive sorghum or the sweet sorghum made 11 tons last season, they see the potential."

McKinney, a grain and feed scientist, will assess what it takes to make good pellets using off-the-shelf technology. He'll include wheat straw, too, because Kansas produces a lot of it. Pelleting essentials include how finely forages need to be ground and what type of pellet-making die will be required.

Breaking the cellulose-sugar chemical bonds happens in the next step, preprocessing, which makes the plant sugars ready for fermentation and ethanol production. Wang, the project's agricultural engineer, will determine the preprocessing methods best suited for treating biomass pellets.

Vadlani, a fermentation specialist with K-State's Bioprocessing and Industrial Value-Added Program, will convert pellets to cellulosic ethanol. He thinks the ethanol production should be efficient and yield higher overall cost benefits.

"Pelleting, which should require less stringent pre-treatment techniques, should yield better quality sugar release. With fewer inhibitory substances in the sugar stream, the fermentation process should be more efficient," he said.

Ethanol production results will be benchmarked against results from corn and switchgrass.