2017 Articles
2017 CenUSA Bioenergy Peer Reviewed Publications
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The CenUSA Bioenergy Vision
Our vision is to create a Midwestern regional system for producing advanced transportation fuels and bioproducts derived from perennial grasses grown on land that is either unsuitable or marginal for row crop production. In addition to producing advanced biofuels and bioproducts, the proposed system will improve the sustainability of existing cropping systems by reducing agricultural runoff of nutrients and soil and increasing carbon sequestration.
About CenUSA Bioenergy
Welcome to CenUSA Bioenergy. We are the home of an ambitious Iowa State University-based, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) sponsored, research project investigating the creation of a Midwestern sustainable biofuels and bioproducts system. This website is dedicated to sharing our work and work products with everyone interested in producing advanced transportation fuels and bioproducts derived from perennial grasses grown on land unsuitable for or marginal for row crop production.
Iowa State University's Ken Moore is the project director for our of nine institution network: Iowa State University, Purdue University; The Ohio State University; University of Wisconsin; University of Minnesota; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; University of Illinois; University of Vermont; USDA Agricultural Research Service. Read more.
Markets and Distribution
The Markets and Distribution team was responsible for evaluating farm-level adoption decisions and exploring policy, market, and contract mechanisms that facilitate broad scale adoption of perennials in the landscape.
The team focused on two research themes:
System Performance
The System Performance team focuses on providing detailed analyzes of feedstock production options. The team also creates models to assist policymakers, farmers, and the bioenergy industry to make informed decisions about which bioenergy feedstocks to grow, where to produce them, what environmental impacts they will have, and how biomass production systems are likely to respond to and contribute to climate change or other environmental shifts.
Feedstock Logistics
The Feedstock Logistics team works on developing systems and strategies to enable sustainable and economic harvest, transportation, and storage of feedstocks. The team focuses on the development and evaluation of harvest and logistics systems that are easily adaptable, produce consistent and quality feedstock for conversion, and are economically, energetically, and environmentally efficient and sustainable.
Feedstock Development
The goal of Feedstock Development is to develop new and improved perennial grass cultivars and hybrids that can be used on marginal cropland in the Central US for the production of biomass for bioenergy and bioproducts.
Our Feedstock Development team members have produced an extensive resource library with material for everyone involved in the development of perennial grasses. Click the links below to jump to each one on the page:
CenUSA Bioenergy Advisory Board
CenUSA Bioenergy is advised by an external Advisory Board with members representing all links in the biofuel supply chain including biomass cultivar development, seed production and marketing, crop production, rural economic development, transportation, storage, conversion, marketing, safety and education.
The Advisory Board's role is to provide high-level, broad advice and to serve as an important link and network into stakeholder groups.
About
Based on our vision of Midwestern regional system for producing advanced transportation fuels and bioproducts using perennial grasses grown on marginal lands, our research efforts are concentrated on ten objectives:
Health and Safety
Bioenergy feedstock production will have inherent differences from current agricultural processes. These differences could increase the potential for workforce injury or death if not properly understood and if effective protective counter measures are not in place.
The Health and Safety research team addresses two key worker safety elements in the biofuel feedstock supply chain: