Ethanol Experiments ‘Explosion Of Ideas’ Emerging Among Farmers In Region
The Bulletin:
Ethanol production could provide additional revenues for Central Oregon’s agricultural and wood products industries and a renewable fuel source for its consumers, but the technology that would combine crops and wood waste into ethanol is still a few years away, ag industry leaders say.
There’s been an ‘explosion of ideas’ from growers statewide in starting biofuel production, said Bruce Pokarney, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Statewide, several projects are in the works that are expected to increase ethanol production by millions of gallons per year, including a project in Boardman, east of The Dalles, that is set to go online with corn-based ethanol this summer.
‘Producers are looking at this as a possible way to make more money,’ Pokarney said. ‘They’re looking at producing a crop for fuel production rather than food production as a way of staying in business.’
At least one farmer in Culver is using a homemade still to convert some of his wheat crop into ethanol that he says will reduce his fuel costs, which amounted to $13,000 last year.
Rex Barber Jr. (photo), owner of Big Falls Ranch Co. in Culver, hopes to save about $3,000 this year by producing ethanol to fuel his vehicles. He’s still working on the cooking and fermentation process that converts a portion of his ground wheat into ethanol. But he could begin selling it locally on a larger scale if it works.
It’s a small-scale example of how Central Oregon farmers could benefit from rising fuel costs for petroleum-based fuels, said Brian Duggan, an Oregon State University crop physiologist at the Central Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Madras.
‘We could see a more localized production of ethanol,’ said Duggan, who is requesting federal grants to develop technology for one or many ethanol stills that would utilize multiple crops and wood waste to produce the alternative fuel source.
Duggan’s research will determine whether it would be most cost effective to develop one large regional still, a few throughout the region or several located near farms or sawmills, he said.
Throughout the state, companies are taking advantage of tax incentives and stricter fuel standards to develop new renewable energy projects, said Warren Shoemaker, a biofuels consultant based in Oregon City.
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