Could sweet sorghum dethrone corn as biofuel king?

Posted on 02/09/2012 by Dan Haugen

Could juice from this corn-like, African plant someday fuel our cars? (Photo by ILRI via Creative Commons)

Most biofuels today are made by extracting sugar from plant material, then feeding it to bugs in a fermenter, which transform it into larger molecules similar to crude-oil hydrocarbons.

Dave Jessen is working to bypass all of that.

Jessen is chief technology officer at Chromatin, a Chicago biotech company that’s working to genetically engineer varieties of sweet sorghum that would convert sugar to biofuel before it even leaves the plant.

“You let the plant do all of that extra work,” says Jessen.

If successful, within a few years Chromatin will have a plant from which you’ll literally be able to wring biodiesel out of at harvest.

Chromatin’s concept has enough promise that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) recently awarded $5.7 million to Chromatin under its PETRO (Plants Engineered To Replace Oil) program. PETRO’s challenge to participants: come up with a crop that produces twice as much energy per acre as what’s currently possible with corn.

The sugar-rich, tropical grass — which looks like corn without the ears — would appear to have many advantages. It grows quickly, up to 14 feet tall, in time to plant and harvest twice a year in warmer regions. And it requires half the water and fertilizer it takes to grow corn. Scientists are also working on varieties that produce even more sugar, and ones that could be grown in colder climates.

Still, a century and a half after sweet sorghum was introduced to America from Africa, it remains a boutique crop in this country with little commercial-scale infrastructure. Competing with corn — or even finding a place alongside it — will require investment in new equipment and years of outreach and education to farmers, who won’t be easily convinced to switch from a known commodity.

Alternative to imports

In the 1860s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was interested in sweet sorghum as a way to reduce reliance on imported sugar cane and slave-owning sugar plantations, according to the National Sweet Sorghum Producers & Processors Association. At the time, the Midwest was the biggest producer of sweet sorghum, which was sometimes called the “Northern Sugar Plant.”

Ultimately the plant proved unsuitable for making dry sugar, and instead it was used to make syrup (and probably moonshine, too, says Jessen). By the 1890s, the crop had mostly migrated to the Southeast, where it’s better suited for the climate.

Sorghum syrup, sometimes called sorghum molasses, still turns up at farmers markets from Iowa to Indiana (where you can attend the annual Crawford County Sorghum Festival in October). Sorghum syrup production peaked around 24 million gallons in the 1880s and then plummeted as glucose syrups took over the market.

Today it’s a tiny industry, accounting nationally for somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 acres of cropland.

AN ‘IDEAL CROP’

A stand of sweet sorghum being tested for biofuel production in Mozambique. (Photo by Swathi Sridharan via Creative Commons)

Countries such as India and Brazil are already ramping up sweet sorghum production to supplement sugar cane as an ethanol ingredient. That isn’t happening yet in the United States, which is more attached to corn, but the federal energy and agriculture departments are funding research and a handful of companies have small projects in the planning stage.

“It’s an ideal crop for almost everything,” says Ismail Dweikat, a sorghum genetics researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who is working to create a cold-tolerant variety to expand the crop’s range. “It’s very cheap to grow. It’s very cheap to make ethanol out of. It’s environmentally friendly. It does not require as much nitrogen or irrigation. It’s an ideal crop.”

In places that receive at least 15 to 20 inches of rain per year, sweet sorghum can be grown without any irrigation at all, says Dweikat. It requires half the fertilizer that corn crops take, and the process of making ethanol from it is far less energy intensive. Instead of grinding and cooking kernels, you simply juice the stalks, add baking yeast, and wait 48 hours.

An improvement such as the sugar-oil conversion Chromatin is working on could be the game-changer the crop needs to find a place in U.S. energy production.

Convincing farmers

Improving on nature’s design may prove to be the easy part, though. Next comes convincing U.S. farmers to grow it.

Our agricultural infrastructure, from the subsidies to transportation, is set up for producing lots and lots of corn. Getting farmers to try sweet sorghum instead is going to take time, education, and probably incentives, too.

Dweikat says government and universities will likely have to take the lead in advancing early projects. He thinks existing ethanol plants could be adapted to also process sweet sorghum for less than $5 million per facility.

The production facilities would need to be located close to the sweet sorghum farms. The juice needs to be collected and processed within hours of harvest or it goes bad. That also means it’s a commodity that can’t be stored like corn, so farmers would lose control over when they sell.

Current sweet sorghum varieties can’t be planted until soil temperatures are above 65 degrees. The variety that Dweikat is working on would be able to sustain 50 degree soil temperatures, but even then Midwest farmers might not be able to fit two cycles into each growing season, something that’s possible in the South.

Policy changes are needed, too, according to Chris Cogburn, strategic business director for the National Sorghum Producers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t yet recognize sweet sorghum ethanol in its renewable fuel standards, something the association is lobbying to change. Until that happens, and more productive hybrid varieties are available, most companies are holding off on significant investments, says Cogburn.

How much potential?

Dweikat thinks those investments might be less than five years off. Chromatin’s PETRO grant is for a three-year study, after which the DOE plans to pursue field testing of the most promising energy crops. Others crops being studied through the PETRO program include grasses, tobacco, camelina, and pine trees.

“What we tried to do was to put together an interesting portfolio of approaches that could theoretically hit the cost and yield targets,” says Jonathan Burbaum, PETRO’s program director.

At the end of the project, PETRO won’t be endorsing any single crop, and that’s because all agriculture is regional and the best option will depend on where you plan to grow it. (Sweet sorghum, for example, may have advantages in drier climates or marginal crop land.)

“It’ll have a niche, and it’ll fit well,” says Cogburn. “Could you produce 500 million gallons from sweet sorghum? I think that could happen. It’s going to be a good-sized industry, but it’s not going to be corn ethanol.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of time it takes to convert sorghum sugars to biofuels. It is 48 hours, not 4 to 8 hours.

Dan Haugen is an Energy Journalism Fellow at Midwest Energy News. Contact him at dan@danhaugen.com.

This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Scrapped Iowa project leaves energy storage lessons

Posted on 01/19/2012 by Dan Haugen

(Image via Sandia National Laboratory)

January 19, 2011

By Dan Haugen

The plan was to take electricity generated by Iowa wind farms at night and use it to compress air into a deep, underground aquifer northwest of Des Moines.

During the daytime, when electricity is in greater demand, the airflow could reverse, spinning turbines with a blast of air as the subterranean container depressurized.

Investors pulled the plug on the Iowa Stored Energy Park project this summer. After years of study they concluded Iowa’s sandstone aquifers aren’t suitable for compressed-air energy storage.

However, the project leaves behind some promising economic findings and other lessons for other energy storage projects.

On Friday, the project’s lead consultant, Bob Schulte, will participate in a U.S. Department of Energy webinar to debrief the industry on what they learned.

“A big part of the story is that the economics look good,” says Schulte. “This dog can hunt.”

Going underground

The history of compressed-air energy storage is brief. A 290-megawatt facility has been in operation in Germany since the late 1970s. An Alabama electric co-op brought a 110-megawatt facility online in 1991. That’s it. Only two exist in the world, and none have been built in the last two decades.

Interest in compressed-air energy storage is resurfacing, and not just in Iowa. Projects have been proposed in Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Ohio, New York and California.

Haresh Kamath, energy storage program manager for the Electric Power Research Institute, says the industry is looking to energy storage as a way to improve the grid’s reliability and better manage intermittent renewables like wind and solar. Where the right geology exists, compressed air may be a simple and economical solution.

“All you need here is a big hole in the ground and a lot of air and you’re all set,” Kamath says.

The Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities started to explore compressed-air energy storage in 2003. Its members face the same problem all wind-power purchasers do: wind tends to blow the most at night, when electricity demand is usually at its lowest. Being able to store that power for the daytime would help make wind more economical.

The energy park project, which would have generated up to 270 megawatts, received $3.2 million in funding from the Iowa Power Fund and $4.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The team started with more than 100 potential sites across the state. They used existing geologic surveys to lower it down to just five. They ran seismic tests on those sites, and then took drilling samples last year at the most promising one, just outside of Dallas Center, a Des Moines suburb.

Compressed air would have been stored 3,000 feet below ground in an upside-down-bowl-shaped aquifer made of porous sandstone. Ultimately, the group concluded that air didn’t flow fast enough through the aquifer for it to be effective as a compressed-air energy storage site.

Gas industry there first

Despite the lack of completed projects, the concepts and technology behind compressed-air energy storage are far from exotic. The natural gas industry has used underground storage for decades. In fact, the gas industry has already claimed and put to use many of the prime locations.

“Iowa thought there was a lot there, and there really wasn’t,” says Georgianne Huff, a project manager in Sandia National Laboratories’ energy storage group. “There are some geologic formations there, but they’re being used by the natural gas industry.”

Still, several potential sites remain, says Huff. Salt domes along the Gulf Coast, for example. Xcel Energy is looking into using depleted natural gas wells for compressed-air energy storage. Aquifers may work, although it’s unknown whether they could sustain constant, daily pressure changes, says Huff.

The electricity industry has been slow to explore compressed-air energy storage for several reasons, says Huff. One factor is likely a cultural and expertise gap.

“They’re electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. They’re not geologists, and geologists aren’t electrical engineers, and they don’t speak the same language,” says Huff.

Compressed air isn’t necessarily better or worse than pumped-hydro energy storage, says Huff, but each requires very specific sites, and so one may work where the other will not.

A new compressed-air energy storage facility in Ohio was slated to be completed about a decade ago, but its funding fell apart in the wake of the Enron scandal, says Huff. In November 2009, Akron utility FirstEnergy bought the rights and plans to revive the development, which would be in an abandoned limestone mine in Norton, Ohio. (FirstEnergy didn’t return a phone call.)

Also, the Nebraska Public Power District announced last fall that it plans to buy the rights to store compressed air in sandstone formations in the western part of that state.

The Energy Department will seek to help inform storage developers with its Lessons From Iowa webinar and report. Schulte, of the Iowa Stored Energy Park, says the presentation will be a “cookbook on how to do a bulk storage project.”

The Lessons From Iowa webinar will take place Friday, January 20, at noon Central. More information is at energy.gov.

Dan Haugen is an Energy Journalism Fellow at Midwest Energy News. Contact him at dan@danhaugen.com.

This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Did pumpkins prompt a special session?

Posted on 10/25/2011 by Ken Paulman

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman’s call for a special session on the Keystone XL pipeline came as a bit of a surprise yesterday, since the last we heard was that the speaker of the state legislature was backing down from the idea, concerned about legal action.

The progressive group Bold Nebraska, which has been campaigning aggressively against the pipeline, says its pumpkin-carving event over the weekend helped turn the governor around.

On Saturday, the group called for volunteers to spell out the message “91 leaks and 0 regulations are scary, call a special session Gov. Heineman” with individual jack o’lanterns carved for each letter.

(You may have noticed the title frame of the video says “August 22,” but I’m pretty sure no one was wearing flannel shirts and jackets in Lincoln in August.)

Heineman, a Republican, has in the past been resistant to the idea of calling a special session to establish state regulatory authority over pipelines, saying as recently as September that the issue should be handled via the federal permitting process. Earlier this month, Heineman openly advocated a state effort to reroute the pipeline.

So, did the pumpkins finally move the governor to call legislators back to Lincoln? It’s impossible to say. But it’s pretty clever.

Putting Keystone XL to a vote?

Posted on 10/03/2011 by Ken Paulman

If you need to catch up, a story from Saturday’s Toronto Globe and Mail provides a good overview of the Keystone XL fight in Nebraska. But a detail toward the end may be a bit confusing.

And if [pushing for a special legislative session this fall] fails, activists have another plan: a ballot initiative. They hope to force a vote, in hopes of compelling the state to enact such legislation. [Jane] Kleeb’s polling suggests they can pull it off. TransCanada dismisses the polling as biased.

The issue is that while individual states can regulate pipeline routes, Nebraska hasn’t designated this authority to any of its agencies. But the legislature isn’t scheduled to convene until January, lawmakers would need to convene earlier to pass any pipeline regulator bills ahead of the State Department’s decision.

The Globe‘s article makes it sound like a ballot initiative establishing pipeline authority could be a possible alternative to the special session. Backers would need about 77,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot, a strong likelihood given the prominence the issue has in the state.

There’s only one problem – in order to get the measure on the 2011 ballot, the signatures needed to be filed back in July. Nebraska law requires signatures be submitted no later than four months prior to the general election.

That means, if activists get started now, they have a good chance of getting language on the ballot for the 2012 election. TransCanada, however, plans to begin construction of the pipeline early next year if it gets approval from the State Department. Assuming there are no further legal challenges, much of the pipeline could already be built before Nebraska gets around to asserting its power to control the route.

There’s still time for Nebraska to change the route of the Keystone XL pipeline if it so desires. But it will depend on the legislature, not the voters.

Photo by Holley St. Germain via Creative Commons

At Keystone XL hearings, expect out-of-towners

Posted on 09/27/2011 by Ken Paulman

While TransCanada remains publicly confident that the State Department will approve the Keystone XL pipeline, they’re taking no chances as a series of hearings gets underway along the pipeline’s routes.

And neither are pipeline opponents.

In Topeka yesterday, pipeline opponents participated in a rally organized by the National Wildlife Federation, while TransCanada representatives and dozens of union members, some from as far away as Tulsa, Oklahoma, attended the hearing.

The New York Times reports that the tiny town of Atkinson, Nebraska, where a hearing is scheduled for Thursday, has called in additional officers from neighboring communities to buttress its police force of three. Amid rumors that TransCanada will be busing in supporters and union members to the hearing, a company spokesman confirms that “supporters from the pipeline industry and organized labor would also be in attendance.”

And today’s hearing in Lincoln, Nebraska, is expected to be so contentious that even the government of Alberta is sending a representative. David Sands, a provincial spokesman and oil sands booster, is in town for the hearing (or perhaps just to enjoy some chicken wings), according to his Twitter feed.

Whether the “listening sessions” will have any effect on the State Department’s decision is yet to be seen. But they will nevertheless provide a clear window into the political forces involved.

Could Nebraska stop Keystone XL?

Posted on 09/19/2011 by Ken Paulman

Memorial Stadium, hallowed ground for many Nebraska football fans, is not a friendly place for TransCanada.

Increasingly, the focus on the Keystone XL debate is shifting from Washington D.C. to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Despite the arrests of more than 1,000 protesters in front of the White House, and a letter from the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and others opposing the pipeline, a greater impact is likely to come from another group of constituents:

Nebraska football fans.

You may recall the story last week from the Lincoln Journal Star, which described fans at Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium booing as a TransCanada-sponsored “Husker Pipeline” video played on the big screen. The outcry prompted athletic director Tom Osborne to end the sponsorship agreement.

To be clear, Osborne wasn’t taking a position on the pipeline itself, he was merely acting on a policy to “avoid ads of a political nature” inside the stadium. “The athletic department has no position, either pro or con, regarding the proposed TransCanada Pipeline,” Osborne said in a statement.

Still, the rebuff by Osborne, who coached the Cornhuskers for 25 years and is one of the state’s most revered public figures, is not to be taken lightly.

Two weeks ago, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman sent a letter to the State Department calling for the pipeline to be rerouted around the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides irrigation and drinking water for much of the Great Plains. Because of the potential threat to this critical groundwater supply, a broad, bipartisan coalition is emerging in the state to oppose the pipeline.

So can Nebraska stop the pipeline? InsideClimate News, which has been covering the issue extensively, has an excellent overview of how the process could play out in the state. While the state’s Congressional delegation differs over whether it’s a state or federal issue, the State Department has said that “individual states have the legal authority to approve petroleum pipeline construction in their states, including selecting the route for such pipelines.”

Nebraska, however, has no state agency assigned to regulate pipelines, and the legislature isn’t scheduled to reconvene until January, after the State Department is expected to issue its final decision on the pipeline. Some state lawmakers are pushing for an unprecedented special legislative session to deal with the issue.

The State Department’s most recent environmental impact statement estimated that rerouting the pipeline could increase costs by as much as 25 percent, potentially rendering the project economically unfeasible. Which means the Nebraska legislature could have as much power as President Obama to determine the pipeline’s fate.

The recent “Husker Pipeline” incident reveals that TransCanada may be as reviled as (dare I say it) the Colorado Buffaloes inside the walls of Memorial Stadium. While it’s not a scientific poll, it’s clear evidence that a lot of Nebraskans are concerned about the pipeline’s potential impact.

Whether this will force the issue in the legislature remains to be seen. But I’d be surprised if state lawmakers aren’t paying a lot more attention now to where their constituents stand on the pipeline.

Photo by Katrina Wiese via Creative Commons

Reporter: no “news blackout” at Nebraska plant

Posted on 06/22/2011 by Dan Haugen

Is the White House covering up one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history?

That’s the allegation made in a long-winded report by Pakistani newspaper The Nation, which claims the Obama administration has ordered a “news blackout” on any information related to Nebraska’s flood-surrounded Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant.

The false story cites a “shocking report” from Russia’s atomic energy agency that allegedly describes a “catastrophic loss of cooling” at the plant, as well as a politically motivated “cover-up” by federal officials in order to preserve Obama’s energy policy.

In reality, the power plant has been in a safe, cold shutdown for months. Plant operators powered it down April 9 for a refueling and never restarted it because of the severe flood forecast. The plant sits along the Missouri River about 20 miles north of Omaha.

Still, the false cover-up rumors have spread. A Google search for “Fort Calhoun nuclear” and “news blackout” turns up around 13,000 results, many of them for right-wing political blogs and message boards.

I decided to call Omaha World-Herald staff writer Nancy Gaarder to ask her what it’s been like covering the nuclear plant story during the midst of a “news blackout”:

“The nuclear power plant on Friday held an hour press conference with the local media. I imagine anyone who wanted to could have come,” said Gaarder. “I haven’t taken the time to preoccupy myself with anything at the presidential level, so I don’t know where that thing came from, but there is not a news blackout. The utility is responding to questions. They had a briefing on Friday and, you know, I don’t know what else to say.”

Gaarder wrote about the plant on June 17 (“NRC: No flood danger at reactor“). Officials said the reactor was safely shutdown, and that flood barriers would protect it against the rising waters. She also interviewed a nuclear watchdog from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which, in this case, didn’t sound overly concerned about the flood risk.

So where did this “news blackout” rumor come from? Gaarder has some theories.

“There was a very interesting and well researched post on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists lamenting the loss of news coverage; that the [news] industry is dwindling away so that it’s harder for this type of good coverage to occur,” Gaarder said, “and that has validity to it.

“I wonder if somehow the idea that we don’t have as many reporters anymore so we don’t have as much news morphed into an intentional news blackout. I don’t know where that came from, or whether this is the kind of thing that happens in an age of the Internet. I have no clue. All I can tell you is there is not a news blackout,” she said.

The World-Herald hasn’t published a story about the Fort Calhoun plant since Saturday. (Gaarder was working on a follow-up story for Thursday’s paper.) There’s a perception among some in the newsroom that they’ve already covered it. “We’ve already said the plant is safe, so what new is there to say?” Gaarder said rhetorically. “People will disagree. What’s news is subjective.”

But the biggest reason there hasn’t been more coverage of the plant is that there’s just a lot going on, and only so many column inches and reporters to get to it all. The airport, bridges and other infrastructure are also threatened by the flooding. A major gasoline terminal was forced to close because of standing water. Other reporters have been covering evacuation plans in the event of a levy break. Tornadoes ripped through the state on Monday. And the city hosted the College World Series over the weekend.

“So we have a lot going on, and a lot of flood-related issues to write about,” Gaarder said. “We have pieces of critical infrastructure that are important, that we’ve had to make sure we understood how they’re protected, and that takes time.”

Nebraska’s nuclear past

Posted on 05/31/2011 by Ken Paulman

The Hallam nuclear plant, in its heyday.

By now you’ve probably heard that Germany will be phasing out all nuclear power by 2022, largely out of safety concerns raised by the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Within that context of renewed emphasis on nuclear safety, a story in Monday’s Lincoln Journal Star about an early experiment in nuclear power is all the more astounding.

The story is a look back at the Hallam nuclear plant, a short-lived attempt at a sodium-cooled reactor that is now entombed in concrete. The plant, which opened in 1962, seemed doomed from the beginning as the reactor’s containment vessel fell off of a truck and was stuck in a muddy cornfield for three weeks.

But the larger problem was the design itself – the plant was shut down after only two years because cracks had formed in the structure and were deemed to expensive to repair.

One of the engineers involved in the project described it as a good learning experience, although this type of reactor design has yet to see widespread use.

Liquid sodium is an attractive cooling option for engineers because it doesn’t corrode steel and doesn’t need to be pressurized. In addition to the Hallam plant, liquid sodium was used in the Fermi 1 plant in Michigan (shut down in 1975), and several early American and Soviet nuclear submarines.

The big problem, however, with using sodium as a coolant ought to be familiar to anyone who was paying attention in high school chemistry class – when it comes into contact with water, it explodes:

That could be a big problem if, say, the reactor is flooding by a tsunami or some such thing.

One of the engineers involved in the project told the Journal Star just how much things have changed.

“It was a lot of fun back in those days. It was just the guys and it was more of a relaxed atmosphere. Nowadays the regulatory atmosphere keeps things tight and close to the vest.”

Photo by Joan Blair via Creative Commons

Class action suit over Keystone XL?

Posted on 05/17/2011 by Ken Paulman

Domina Law Group, an Omaha-based trial lawyer firm, is considering a lawsuit against TransCanada over its use of eminent domain to secure a route for the Keystone XL pipeline through Nebraska.

In a news release, Domina asks:

“TransCanada’s threat to use eminent domain under the authority of a Nebraska statute permitting pipeline companies to do so with no checks on their authority is a real concern. Does this mean any foreign company from any nation can announce a pipeline project and condemn Nebraska land even if the company serves the interests of a nation out of favor with our own?”

It’s a question that’s come up before, creating an interesting political alliance between environmental groups and political conservatives.

However, as SolveClimate News reported in March, a special legal status may make the pipeline immune to such lawsuits.

h/t Politico’s Morning Energy

Minnesota, Illinois lead in wind power additions

Posted on 05/03/2011 by Molly Priesmeyer

Last week the American Wind Energy Association released its first quarter market report for 2011, revealing that the wind power industry installed 1,118 MW during the first quarter of the year alone and that Minnesota and Illinois are leading the charge in new installations.

Minnesota had 293 MW capacity additions, while Illinois saw 240 MW. In 2010, Minnesota ranked fourth in wind power additions, behind California, while Illinois ranked sixth.

Total wind capacity by state still puts Texas well ahead of the rest of the country. According to the AWEA market report, the top 10 states for total wind power are:

1. Texas: 10,135 MW
2. Iowa: 3,675 MW
3. California: 3,179 MW
4. Minnesota: 2,432 MW
5. Washington, 2,356 MW
6. Illinois: 2,286 MW
7. Oregon: 2,104 MW
8. Oklahoma: 1,482 MW
9. North Dakota: 1,424 MW
10. Wyoming: 1,412 MW

Tag Archives: Nebraska