Challenges on the Road to Biofuels

meet the growing demand for transportation fuels. The main hurdles to be overcome include feedstock-supply logistics, conversion technology and workforce availability. agronomists, agricultural engineers, and implement-manufacturing companies are addressing feedstock production, harvest, storage and transportation. Several universities, especially those in the Midwest, are developing new curricula and programs to bolster the workforce pipeline in bioprocessing. Therefore, the focus of this presentation will be on issues related to conversion technology. The US ethanol industry is primarily based on processing of corn grain (i.e. starch) through either dry-grind or wet-milling processes. Development of the dry-grind industry began in the mid970s, and South Dakota State University (SDSU) was a leader in that effort. SDSU was the site of the nation’s first on-campus ethanol production facility, and figure shows the distillation columns. work at SDSU established initial costs (Dobbs et al., 984) and energy-balance data (Stampe, 98 ) for farm-scale ethanol plants, as well as technology innovations such as thin-stillage recycling (Gibbons and westby, 98 ) that are still in use today. Based on the pioneering work at SDSU, the fledgling industry expanded as multimillion gallon, farmer-owned plants sprung up across the Midwest. figure shows the basic process flow in modern ethanol plants, while figure 3 shows the current status of US ethanol production. The current (mid007) US production capacity exceeds 6 billion gallons per year, with another 6 billion gallons of plant capacity under construction Challenges on the Road to Biofuels