Great article on criteria for alternative liquid fuels
charles.dillon2An insightful article by Dr. Bruce Dale from Michigan State University on metrics for possible alternatives to oil.
Creating Biojet Fuel
NARA represented at CAAFI 2014 General Meeting in Washington DC
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Posted by Michael Wolcott, NARA project co-director
NARA is well represented at CAAFI’s flagship meeting around alternative aviation fuels. We are joining a majority of the biofuels industry, the US air carriers, Boeing, FAA, USDA, DOE, NIST, …more
Bioenergy Alliance Network of the Rockies (BANR)
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On November 6th 2013, the US Department of Agriculture awarded nearly $10 million to fund research to develop renewable fuel and biochar production using insect-killed trees in the Rocky Mountain region as a sustainable feedstock. The award was provided to the Bioenergy Alliance of the Rockies (BANR): a consortium of academic, industry and government organizations led by Colorado State University.
BANR’s website can …more
Variations of forest residual biomass
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Thinning and harvesting forests in the Pacific Northwest generate lots of residual woody biomass. Currently, much of that biomass is left in slash piles while a small percentage is used to heat buildings or generate electricity. By law, those slash piles left unused are burned to reduce forest fire hazard. This process contributes to smoke and air pollution. NARA is helping to develop an industry that converts this …more
Forest Inventory and Utilization Data
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One of the services provided by NARA affiliate, The University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER), is publically available forest industry data. Much of the information they provide and compile contributes to NARA’s efforts to produce supply chain, environmental and economic sustainability analyses, models and GIS applications useful to an emerging wood-based biofuels industry in the Pacific Northwest. Listed below are two sources …more
Improving simple sugar yields from wood residuals
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Materials built from simple sugar molecules are the foundation of plant systems. Many plants, like corn, use these sugar-based materials to store energy in the form of starch. We then use these materials for food and increasingly as fuels and chemicals. Simple sugars are also used in structural plant materials that humans …more
John Sessions to receive national award from the Society of American Foresters
charles.dillon2John Sessions, NARA’s team leader for feedstock logistics and distinguished professor and chair of the Forest Operations Management program in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University (OSU) will receive the Award in Forest Science, one of nine national awards given by the Society of American Foresters (SAF). Below is the news release distributed by SAF:
The Society of American Foresters (SAF) has announced that John Sessions, distinguished professor and chair of the Forest Operations Management program in the College …more
Transporting Biomass
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An initial techno-economic analysis for the NARA biojet scenario has been completed. With the premise of constructing totally new facilities and current feedstock availability and costs, we estimate the manufacturing cost to produce biojet fuel derived from woody residuals at 2-3 times above the current market price for petrochemical-based jet fuel. Our current efforts are now aimed at reducing this initial cost estimate on many fronts. In …more
Estimating Forest Biomass
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Developing improved tools and methods used to estimate the amount of residual biomass potential contained in a softwood plantation or forest is a key task for the NARA project. The amount of forest residues available affects how much biojet fuel and co-products are produced, the location sites for depots and conversion plants and the overall sustainability of the residual wood to …more
Characterizing Various Feedstocks
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Gevan Marrs at Weyerhaeuser generated this above figure. Packed with useful information, it is often used in NARA presentations. The purpose of this article is to define elements in the figure and provide some analysis. A bulk of the information presented in …more