Biodiesel Heads to Space

Joanna Schroeder

Biodiesel is going to outer space. Well, not exactly but the jatropha plant will be part of the shuttle Atlantis’ last mission to space launching this July. Assistant Professor Wagner Vendrame, who works in the department of horticulture at the University of Florida’s research center in Homestead, Florida will send the experiment to look at the effect of low gravity on the growth of the jatropha cells, a plant being researched for its viability to make biodiesel.

According to an article in The Gainsville Sun, Vendrame has sent similar experiments on previous shuttle flights. Vendrame hopes the experiments will result in the activation of dormant genes that could lead to increased oil content in the plant or bring out other factors that will improve biofuel production.

There are dozens of projects worldwide involving jatropha. Today, jatropha-based biodiesel has been successfully used in renewable jet fuel blends. However, it is still not grown in any significant quantities in the United States.

Many believe jatropha will be a good feedstock for biodiesel because it has a high oil content compared to other crops. Vendrame also hopes that his research can help make jatropha a viable alternative crop for Florida citrus growers who have faced setbacks due to disease.

Biodiesel, biofuels

Diesels, LLC Formed to Buy & Sell Biodiesel

Joanna Schroeder

A new company has been formed to aid biodiesel companies sell their product. Diesels, LLC, the new company, will be managed by biodiesel consulting group, Lee Enterprises, based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Wayne Lee, principal owner of Lee Enterprises Consulting said he is pleased his company has been selected to lead the new company.

“Diesels, LLC was formed by four individuals with lots of experience in the biodiesel industry,” said Lee. “Two of them own the engineering and design groups that have designed, built and installed more biodiesel plants than anyone I know of. All four have owned a biodiesel plant and have first-hand experience with the problems facing the industry.”

Lee believes his company will have an advantage because they will better help a biodiesel plant receive more of the benefit RINS and the biodiesel tax credit. Oftentimes, the purchaser of the biodiesel does not need the RIN (Renewable Identification Number) or the tax credit and instead by the biodiesel at competitive prices to rack prices of diesel fuel. Prior to forming the Diesels, the founders did extensive research on the rules and regulations to sell biodiesel without RINS of which there are only nine legal ways to do this.

Lee explained, “The RIN and the tax credit were designed to benefit the folks with the risk. Most biodiesel purchasers just want consistently, good quality product at competitive rates. While it may seem like a simple task to simply detach RINS and move on, I can assure you that it is more complex than it might appear. The attorneys, CPAs and other experts have spent quite a bit of time perfecting a system that will work.”

Lee claims the “Diesels’ system” creates a “win/win” situation for everyone.

Biodiesel, biofuels

Crimea Home to New Solar Power Project

Joanna Schroeder

The Ukraine has finalized the construction of a new solar energy power station in the Crimea with the help of Nature Energy. The new solar project is a part of the country’s National Projects aimed at lessening the imported energy consumption by 30 percent by 2015. The solar power system has the ability to produce up to 25 thousand megawatt-hours, enough to supply all the energy needed for approximately 5000 average sized homes. The project is also estimated to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 tons per year.

Ukrainian leadership launched its National Projects in 2010 and one of its goals is to produce electric energy from clean sources such as solar and wind. By 2015, the country wants 2000 MW of energy generated from renewable sources. The State Agency of Ukraine for Energy Efficiency and Energy Conservation reports that the share of alternative energy shall make up to 30 percent of Ukrainian energy market before 2015. This is an important goal for the country – today nearly 60 percent of its energy, mainly natural gas, is imported.

To help build the solar industry in the country and to encourage businesses and consumers to adopt solar energy, the country created a green tariff system in September 2008. In April of 2009, the green tariff was modified to become a 20 year fixed feed-in tariff for renewable sources.

Ukraine believes that it has an extensive market for solar energy. The capacity of solar radiation in Ukraine reaches from 800 to 1450 W/m squared per year and several regions have the most potential including Crimea, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Odesa. Ukraine is the twelfth largest energy market in the world with an installed capacity of 54 GW as of 2009, exporting its excess electricity to such countries as Russia, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Moldova, and Hungary.

Electricity, Energy, Solar

Chicagoland Speedway President Talks Ethanol

Chuck Zimmerman

The President of Chicagoland Speedway is Scott Paddock. He manages a beautiful racing facility. This is a bird’s eye view of the track before the NASCAR STP 300 race. I spoke with Scott who says they’re celebrating their tenth anniversary.

We talked about the fact that we were about to see the inaugural STP 300 race as well as the fact that this is the inaugural season for NASCAR to use a blend of ethanol in their fuel. He says that the partnership with American Ethanol and Illinois Corn Growers allows them to do something to help protect the environment. He says that the nearby drag strip and the track were essentially started by a group of farmers. If you visit the track you’ll see that it sits right in the middle of fields of corn. I was glad to see the corn because it added a visual connection to the whole home-grown fuel concept!

You can listen to my interview with Scott here: Scott Paddock Interview

STP 300 Nationwide Series NASCAR Weekend Photos

American Ethanol, Audio, Ethanol, NASCAR

7th Annual Biofuels Financial Conference Around the Corner

Joanna Schroeder

Despite high oil prices, the financial future of the ethanol industry could be a challenge due to high corn prices, fluctuating energy prices and uncertainty of the future of ethanol policies such as the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). To learn more about managing plant risk and to foster the environment for the biofuels industry to better work together, Understanding Your Business is the focus of the 7th Annual Biofuels Financial Conference. The event will be held in Minneapolis, Minn. on June 22-23, 2011 at the Bloomington Embassy Suites.

John Christianson, Partner, Christianson & Associates, PLLP, notes that his company, which is both a CPA firm and a consulting firm that has worked in the biofuels industry for nearly 17 years, understands the importance of providing services and products that can help ensure financial success for a biofuels plant. One session will focus solely on risk management strategies while another session will focus opportunities to strengthen your business.

In addition, there will be a panel featuring the leaders of the American Coalition for Ethanol, Growth Energy and the Renewable Fuels Association discussing the state of the industry and how they are working together to move the ethanol industry forward. This dynamic, interactive panel will focus on answering conference participants’ questions about legislative initiatives, reality of budget issues, interplay between first and second generation biofuels, the environment surrounding the emerging carbon economy as well as how to counter negative media and consumer biofuel attacks.

“It’s important for people that make up the industry to get a good feel for when the industry is headed,” said Christianson. “What are the legislative hurdles, what are the marketplace hurdles, what are the opportunities out there and how are the leaders of our industry helping us maximize those opportunities?”

Listen to my full interview with John Christianson here: 7th Annual Biofuels Financial Conference

Christianson said he wants to send a clear message to the industry, as well as the public, that industry leaders are talking and working together to solve industry issues. “We’ve got tremendous pressure from Congress with cost containment within the direction of our energy policy within the country. We have to look and find out how biofuels is going to fit within all of these parameters,” said Christianson.

Attendees will be able to email questions prior to the panel as well as ask questions during the industry leader session. Questions can be emailed to Elizabeth VanDerBill at evanderbill@christiansoncpa.com.

Space is limited. Click here to view a full agenda and click here to register online.

Audio, Biodiesel, biofuels, conferences, Ethanol

NASCAR Nationwide Series Says Ethanol Performing Well

Chuck Zimmerman

The director of the NASCAR Nationwide Series is Joe Balash, pictured here before Saturday’s STP 300 at Chicagoland Speedway. He’s proudly displaying the American Ethanol name around the gas coupler on this car that just happened to be rolling by. That name is on all NASCAR cars.

I talked with Joe before the race. He talks about how STP has “come back” to NASCAR as a major race sponsor. Then we moved to ethanol. He says that using a blend of ethanol is “part of the things we’re trying to do to become less dependent on foreign fuels.” Joe believes it’s great to partner with American Ethanol and be able to use ethanol mixed with their Sunoco racing fuel to provide a very high quality, high power fuel for the race cars. He says the fuel is performing very well for the NASCAR teams which is a comment I heard repeatedly over the race weekend.

Joe Balash Interview

STP 300 Nationwide Series NASCAR Weekend Photos

American Ethanol, Audio, Ethanol, NASCAR

Carbon Science Focuses on Natural Gas to Fuel

Joanna Schroeder

Carbon Sciences has announced plans to produce samples of diesel fuel derived from natural gas and carbon dioxide in a demonstration facility. The refinery will utilize its catalyst technology to produce syngas that can then be converted into gasoline and other fuels using conventional Fischer-Tropsch (“FT”) gas-to-liquids (“GTL”) technology.

The company believes that of varying technologies to produce syngas from natural gas, a method of dry reforming using CO2, is the best approach due to lower projected capital and operating costs. The Carbon Sciences team also believes its technology has solved the problem of a lack of commercial catalyst robust enough to sustain dry reforming reactions on an industrial scale. With the completion of 2,000 hours of lab testing and 600 hours of commercial testing, Carbon Sciences says its catalyst has been proven to work continuously at high conversion efficiency and is the most robust catalyst available today for dry forming of methane.

“After achieving very positive commercial test results for our catalyst, we are moving ahead aggressively to accelerate the production of larger quantities of the catalyst, as well as completing the technical and economic analyses in preparation for discussions with strategic partners,” said Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences. “Working with the GTL experts at our engineering firm, Emerging Fuels Technology, we also plan to demonstrate an end-to-end process that will produce samples of diesel fuel that can be used by existing diesel vehicles.”

Elton continued, “Our diesel fuel will have the same characteristics as conventional petroleum based diesel fuel. However, our fuel will burn cleaner than conventional petroleum based diesel fuel simply because it is molecularly manufactured from natural gas and carbon dioxide, without the contaminants found in petroleum based diesel. Making samples of clean burning diesel is just one of the ways we intend to demonstrate our breakthrough technology.”

Carbon Sciences’ robust dry reforming technology does not require the use of a capital-intensive air separation unit, and the company believes it has the potential to successfully enable FT technology and change the course of the transportation fuels industry.

Carbon, Natural Gas

Green Plains Builds Business

Joanna Schroeder

Green Plains Renewable Energy announced today its acquisition of a grain storage facility located in Hopkins, Missouri. The grain storage facility can house up to 2 million bushels of grain and was formerly owned by Horizon Grain of Hopkins, Inc and GS Grain LLC. The grain elevator is located about 45 minutes from Green Plains’ ethanol biorefinery in Shenandoah, Iowa.

“Expanding our agribusiness operations to further diversify our revenues and cash flows remains a priority for us in 2011,” stated Todd Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer. “The close proximity to our ethanol production and grain facilities in southwest Iowa makes this elevator a solid fit within our business platform. Combining this acquisition with our existing storage capacity and the announced expansion of our Tennessee grain assets, we will have 35 million bushels of grain storage capacity within our agribusiness segment by this fall’s harvest. We continue to look for additional acquisition opportunities to grow our agribusiness segment.”

Company Announcement, corn, Ethanol

NASCAR STP 400 Winning Team Pleased with Ethanol

Cindy Zimmerman

Brad Keselowski driving the #2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger won the inaugural Sprint Cup Series STP 400 at the Kansas Speedway Sunday where American Ethanol was prominently displayed.

When asked during the post-race press conference about NASCAR using 15% ethanol fuel this year, Keselowski said he applauded NASCAR for its green initiative. “It’s just an added benefit that (ethanol) comes from America,” he said. “That’s really cool.”

Fuel saving was what won the race for Keselowski and crew chief Paul Wolfe says he’s seen no change in performance since the series switched to 15% ethanol this year. “Seemed to be a pretty good fuel for us today,” he said.

Team owner Roger Penske is pleased with the NASCAR move to ethanol. “The reliability is there, the fuel mileage is there and you can see the performance, so I think it’s a win-win for everyone,” said Penske.

Listen to the STP 400 winning team talk about ethanol here: Brad Keselowski, Roger Penske and Paul Wolfe

See all the race photos here: American Ethanol at NASCAR Sprint Cup STP 400

American Ethanol, Audio, corn, Ethanol, Ethanol News, NASCAR, NCGA

Childress Believes NASCAR Could Use More Ethanol

Cindy Zimmerman

Former NASCAR driver and owner of Richard Childress Racing thinks the racing series could go to higher ethanol blends sometime in the future.

Despite media attention regarding an “incident” between him and driver Kyle Busch on Saturday, Richard Childress was happy to come by the American Ethanol tent Sunday and voice his support for corn farmers and the domestically produced fuel.

“I’m a farmer myself and I understand the livelihood of farmers and I think it’s great for America what they are doing to help us not to have to depend on as much foreign energy,” he said. “I hope some day we can run it all on ethanol.”

Childress believes there is a good possibility that NASCAR could go to an even higher ethanol blend than the 15% started this year. “We tested the 30 and it ran really well but I think NASCAR wants to ease into it with fuel injection coming,” he added.

The American Ethanol paint job decorated the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet driven by Clint Bowyer at Kansas Speedway on Sunday.

Listen to my interview with Richard Childress here: Richard Childress Supports Ethanol

See all the race photos here: American Ethanol at NASCAR Sprint Cup STP 400

American LeMans, Audio, Ethanol, Ethanol News, NASCAR, NCGA