Challenge could become new business in biomass industry

AgriNews
Date Modified: 12/22/2009 9:13 AM
By Heather Thorstensen
Agri News staff writer

ST. PAUL -- A challenge for the emerging biomass-for-energy market could become a new business opportunity.

Once farmers begin growing biomass other than grain for renewable energy production, someone will need to get it in a form suitable for transportation and haul it to a facility that can use it for energy.

This could create a new type of business, said Vance Morey, a University of Minnesota professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering.

Morey spoke recently during a conference on the St. Paul campus titled "Growing the Bioeconomy: Solutions for Sustainability."

He presented a logistics model of supplying corn stover to an ethanol plant for electricity and process heat.

The model showed farmers could receive an estimated $7 per ton profit. It accounts for costs of collecting, storing and transporting the stover as well as replacing soil nutrients.

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