SBDC designated a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence (March 2012)


The Sustainable Bioenergy Development Center has been awarded a Programs of Research and Scholarly Excellence (PRSE) Designation.  Programs are awarded this designation because they have achieved great distinction and set a standard for excellence that may serve as a model for programs throughout the institution once every four years. This award was one of four programs awarded this designation from the College of Engineering, and 1 of 19 from the university.



Ethanol use poses dilemma for City of Fort Collins fleet (January 2012)


Read the original article at http://www.northfortynews.com/ethanol-use-poses-dilemma-for-fort-collins-fleet/

From the North Forty News, January 24th, 2012:


Is it better to support an imperfect solution or abstain until something better comes along?  That’s the dilemma facing the Fort Collins City Council when it comes to running its fleet of 96 flex-fuel vehicles.

On the one hand, using E85 – a blend of 85 percent denatured ethanol and 15 percent gasoline – reduces the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by 535 metric tons a year, as well as other emissions that contribute to ozone production. Larimer and Weld county residents are now required to have their personal vehicles tested annually because of the amount of ozone in the air.

Less air pollution supports the city’s goals of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and traditional fuel use by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. Purchasing policies also require the city to buy hybrid or alt-fuel vehicles whenever possible.

On the other hand, some council members are uncomfortable putting corn-based ethanol in the gas tank. Their concerns center around the amount of water and fertilizer used to grow corn; possible land-use and environmental impacts; and the hotly debated topic of what increased ethanol demand does to global food prices.

Council heard a presentation from the city’s Sustainability Director Bruce Hendee and Natural Resources Department staff about the issue at a Nov. 8 work session. Although no votes are taken in work sessions, the council’s options are to stop using corn-based ethanol altogether; cap usage at present levels; reduce the ethanol blend to E50; or continue to use increasing amounts of E85 while evaluating other fuels as they become available.

In 2010, the city used 62,000 gallons of E85, up from 2,332 gallons in 2007 when it first purchased flex-fuel vehicles. E85 accounts for 8 percent of the city’s total fuel consumption; biodeisel used in Transfort buses and heavy trucks accounts for 38 percent and gasoline 36 percent.

Flex-fuel and biodiesel vehicles are the only options that are not $2,000 to $10,000 more expensive than traditional vehicles.

The city has received a $30,000 grant from the Governor’s Energy Office to construct two E85 fueling stations for its fleet. The four city stations pump E85 containing ethanol produced from locally grown corn by Front Range Energy in Windsor. Fort Collins also purchases E85 from two local suppliers: Western Convenience and Poudre Valley Coop.

Alternative-fuel alternatives

While most observers agree that corn is not the ideal feedstock for ethanol, currently available alternatives are a bit thin.

“There was a lot of research on alternative fuels done in the late 1970s and ’80s, after the oil crisis,” according to Kenneth Reardon, associate head of the chemical and biological engineering department at CSU and site director of the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels. “But after that crisis passed, government investment plummeted, and all that research just sat on the shelf until four or five years ago. We lost about 25 years when we could have been working on the problem.”

Total domestic ethanol production in 2010 was 12.3 billion gallons, and preliminary Federal Trade Commission figures show that 2011 production would meet the 15-billion gallon Renewable Fuel Standard set by Congress in 2007. By 2022, the RFS will be 36 billion gallons, with corn ethanol capped at 15.2 billion gallons.

Biofuels represent less than 10 percent of the nation’s annual gasoline consumption, according to the Department of Energy.

About 160 firms across the country produce ethanol, but not much of it is sold to the general public. Poudre Valley Coop reported at-the-pump sales from its four E85 hoses of only 400 gallons in the entire month of November. Without the Fort Collins fleet contract, offering the E85 option would no longer make economic sense.

The market for ethanol has helped the state’s corn farmers make more economic sense out of their operations. Mark Sponsler, executive director of Greeley-based Colorado Corn, said the ethanol plants operating in Sterling and Yuma as well as Windsor have increased the price growers get for their crop.

“After five decades of prices between $1 and $2 per bushel at the farm gate, growers are now getting closer to $5 per bushel,” he said. “That allows them not only to plant more crops, but in some cases to keep on farming, rather than selling up their land for other uses.”

It has also added a necessary certainty to the market, Sponsler said.
In 2007 Congress also set an RFS for ethanol made from feedstocks other than corn. It was subsequently reduced for 2012 because few commercial-scale cellulosic facilities are in operation.

In Brazil, ethanol is made from sugar, and “energy cane,” along with domestic oil production, helped the country stop importing oil in 2006. The rapid conversion of rainforest to cane fields, however, is causing environmental concerns.

Sugar beets, a longtime staple of the Northern Colorado economy, can also produce ethanol. Research in Canada has shown that converting beets to ethanol is six times more efficient than corn, and the process can produce more water than it consumes.

Tom Schwartz, executive director of the Beet Sugar Development Foundation in Denver, said it wouldn’t be difficult for his members to convert some of their crops to fuel instead of sugar.

“But everyone’s factories are already operating at capacity,” he said. “The price of ethanol would have to go up, maybe about 50 percent, and they would have to have some certainty that the price would stay up, to be able to invest in the plant expansion that would be needed. I’d love to see it, but it’s not in the cards right now.”

Why not use the millions of trees in Colorado killed by the mountain pine beetle as a feedstock? The technology exists to make ethanol on a commercial scale from woody biomass.

“It would be great to see something positive come out of the pine-beetle epidemic,” CSU’s Reardon said. “But the challenge is collecting the trees. A lot of them are a long way from a processing plant, and a lot of infrastructure (like roads) would have to be built.”

So what’s a city to do?

The Fort Collins Natural Resources staff and the Air Quality Advisory Board recommended that the city continue using E85 on its current trajectory until other alternative fuels become locally viable, evaluating its options annually.
The issue is not set to come back before city council before August.



Lead CSU biofuels scientist, Dan Bush, elected as fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (December 2011)


Read the original article at http://www.today.colostate.edu/story.aspx?id=6597


From Today @ CSU, December 19th, 2011 :

Two chairs of the College of Natural Sciences - Daniel R. Bush in biology and Ellen R. Fisher in chemistry - have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a prestigious peer honor awarded to a select group of scientists across the country each year.
 
Bush is being recognized for research on plant assimilate metabolism and for his service as president of the American Society of Plant Biologists and chair of the AAAS Section on Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources. Fisher is being honored for her important contributions to understanding of gas-phase and plasma chemistry and plasma-surface interactions.
They are the only Colorado State University scientists to be named in this year’s class of Fellows.
 
“This recognition is a testament to the outstanding work done by Drs. Bush and Fisher – and to our Colorado State University faculty in general,” said Provost Rick Miranda. “We are second in the nation for our federal research expenditures – among all public universities without a medical school – in part because of the leadership provided by such faculty members as Dr. Bush and Dr. Fisher. Our students benefit from the intellectual excitement and challenges provided by having these great individuals and their peers as their teachers and mentors.”

“As the largest and most prestigious general science society, election as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science is a distinguished honor,” said Jan Nerger, dean of the College of Natural Sciences. Ellen and Dan have each made important contributions to science and having them recognized by AAAS, and in the same year, is extraordinary.”

Daniel R. Bush
Description: http://www.today.colostate.edu/userfiles/images/dan_bush_275(1).jpg
 
Bush is a plant biologist who uses biochemical and molecular genetic tools to dissect plant function. His laboratory provided the first biochemical and molecular descriptions of several plant sugar and amino acid transport systems that are key contributors to resource allocation within cells and between plant organs. Bush and his research associates are using their discoveries about the regulation of sugar partitioning to different organs to increase plant growth. The aim of that research is to maximize plant biomass generation for both food and biofuel.
Earlier this year, Bush was one of three co-principal investigators to receive a $1.35 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to discover genes that control plant biomass as a feedstock for biofuel. The award is the second for the multi-disciplinary team. In 2008, they received $1.5 million from the DOE and USDA to use rice as a model grass for biomass gene discovery. Armed with that knowledge, they’re now turning to switchgrass, a non-food crop that is being developed as a new energy crop for biofuels. Bush was the lead scientist on a $400,000 USDA-AFRI grant this spring that focuses on improving sugar transport in sugar beet as a novel approach for improving yield. He is also a co-principal investigator on a $3 million National Science Foundation education grant to provide interdisciplinary biofuels training for doctoral students.

In addition to his work in the laboratory, Bush leads the Department of Biology at CSU that ranks among the top 10 undergraduate programs in the country. Biology faculty are distinguished researchers and educators with more than $28 million dollars in active research grants and multiple college teaching awards. Individual recognition in the department includes a University Distinguished Professor and several AAAS Fellows.

He is a former President of the American Society of Plant Biologists, former Chair of the Section on Agriculture, Food and Renewable Resources for AAAS, and serves on the editorial boards of four professional journals.
 
 
Ellen R. Fisher
Description: http://www.today.colostate.edu/userfiles/images/ellen_fisher_275.jpg
 
Fisher is an analytical, materials and physical chemist whose work focuses on understanding the fundamental chemical processes that take place during plasma processing and chemical vapor deposition. She also works to advance applications for semiconductor materials, improve solar cell efficiency, develop composite nanomaterials and explore environmental applications for plasma chemistry. Fisher’s cutting-edge research has resulted in three patents, more than 125 peer-reviewed journal articles and 100 invited talks.

Her numerous scholarly activities have included directing the Chemistry department’s National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and co-founding and serving as the director for the Women in Natural Sciences group. Fisher is a fellow of the American Vacuum Society and a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society. She also serves as an associate editor for the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, as well as on several other scientific journal editorial boards.

Fisher was named a Professor Laureate in the College of Natural Sciences at CSU in 2009. In July 2009, she accepted the chair position in the department after serving for three years as associate chair. In 2010, the university’s Vice President for Research honored Fisher with the Scholarship Impact Award, one of the highest annual honors bestowed on a faculty member by the university. The award recognizes outstanding faculty whose scholarship has had a major impact nationally and/or internationally and comes with a $10,000 award. She joined Colorado State in 1993.

In addition to her work in the laboratory, Fisher leads a department that ranks among the top 50 graduate programs in the country and includes a University Distinguished Professor and several AAAS Fellows. The Chemistry department has annual research expenditures of more than $7 million and has been designated a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence for the past 15 years.
 



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