U.S.D.A. scientists match bioenergy sites, feedstocks

Scientists with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), have figured out a cost-benefit balance between identifying the best sites for building bioenery facilities in the Pacific Northwest and supplying those facilities with the biofeedstock needed to produce fuel.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) agronomist George Mueller-Warrant, plant physiologist Gary Banowetz, and hydrologist Jerry Whittaker calculated that the 6.2 million tons of straw left over from the production of Pacific Northwest cash crops could be used to produce in excess of 430 million gallons of biofuel.

ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA. priority of developing new sources of bioenergy.  The scientists, who work at the ARS Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit  in Corvallis, Oregon, revised a statistical approach that had been developed by other location analysts to identify the best locations for commercial and public facilities. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Global Miller, published and supported by the GFMT Magazine from Perendale Publishers.