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Professor formulates plan using flood plains for biomass production Marginal lands are not necessarily areas where it is difficult to grow crops. Shibu Jose, a professor at the University of Missouri and director of the university’s Center for Agroforestry, estimates there is nearly 116 million acres of marginal land along corridors of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. “We do have perhaps the nation’s most productive agricultural land in this corridor, but the
A Positive Evaluation
Virent’s renewable gasoline successfully completes road trial Royal Dutch Shell recently tested the impact of Virent Energy Systems Inc.’s biobased gasoline on vehicle engines. The results of the evaluation show that the renewable fuel caused “no harm” to vehicles when compared to conventional gasoline. To complete the road trials, Shell used five identical pairs of vehicles. One vehicle in each pair was fueled with petroleum gasoline; the other was fueled with a mix of petroleum gasoline and Virent’s biobased fuel. Each car was then driven approximately 6,000 miles. At the end of trial the engines of all 10 cars were dismantled and inspected. Regardless of the fuel used, all engines were found to be in the same condition. Aaron Imrie, Virent’s commercial manager of fuels, says that the successful completion of the trial is an important achievement for this company. “We had a lot of confidence that we would be successful in completing this first road trial,” he adds, noting that Virent’s
flood plain also has some of the most sensitive land in the country,” Jose says. “We call it a flood plain for a reason. They get flooded frequently. The land is marginal in the sense that it is frequently flooded and has a high potential for erosion when you do row cropping.” Owners of these lands generally plant row crops, such as corn or soybeans. This means the soil is disturbed at least once a year. In the event of a flood, soil from the disturbed land is more easily eroded, impacting the quality of the land and river water. Jose is proposing that this vulnerable land be used to produce biomass feedstocks, such as switchgrass, miscanthus, cottonwood or willow. He says the cultivation of these crops is less risky, as the land rarely has to be dis-
turbed for replanting. The biomass crops are also much more tolerant of flooding conditions than traditional row crops, which means that the farming community will be less vulnerable to losing their crops. Jose is currently working to establish a consortium of stakeholders along the corridor. He is working to get the entire supply chain involved, from land owners producing the biomass, to the refiners who are processing that biomass into fuel, and the consumers who use it. “When we looked at this region, we could not find a lot of effort [being put] into bringing key players to the table to talk about issues related to the biobased economy,” Jose says. “If we can work together, we can make this bioeconomy happen faster.” —Erin Voegele
renewable gasoline is a drop-in biofuel that is nearly identical to fossil gasoline on a molecular level. According to Imrie, the trial demonstrated that Virent’s renewable gasoline essentially performs identically to conventional gasoline. “That is exactly what we were hoping to see,” he says. Additional testing will need to be completed to certify Virent’s fuel for deployment
in the U.S. That testing will be done through engagement with the U.S. EPA. “We’ve started those discussions,” Imrie says. “There is a fairly lengthy process for getting a new fuel approved in the U.S. At this point we’re ready to do what the EPA calls Tier 1 testing. That is similar to the fleet trials in the U.K…and it focuses primarily on the exhaust emissions as well as the evaporative emissions.” —Erin Voegele
PHOTO: VIRENT ENERGY SYSTEMS INC.
A Soggy Solution
Going the Distance Members of the Shell and Virent teams look over the fleet used in the road trial. november 2011 | Biorefining Magazine | 13