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Vilsack to visit Iowa algae biofuels facility
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack will be in Shenandoah, Iowa Friday to take part in a grand opening event at an algae biofuels facility.
According to the USDA, Vilsack will also discuss the future of renewable energy in rural America.
The algae biofuels facility is a joint venture of Omaha-based Green Plains Renewable Energy and BioProcess Algae LLC. The latest addition to the project—a facility housing what are called grower harvester bioreactors—is located next to Green Plains’ corn ethanol plant in Shenandoah. Green Plains’ spokesman Jim Stark explains the process.
“These reactors are taking the warm water and CO2 from the ethanol production process at our Shenandoah plant and they are growing algae,” Stark says. “We have been growing algae in these Phase II reactors for approximately three months now.”
Stark says the algae grown and harvested from the bioreactors will have a variety of uses.
“It can be used as a livestock feed—as a supplement for animal feed. It can be used as a biomass—an energy source to actually burn or to provide back into the ethanol production process,” Stark says, “or it could be used as kind of a food or pharmaceutical or nutraceutical product as well.”
Stark says another benefit from the co-location of the algae project and ethanol plant is the ability to use the carbon dioxide that is a by-product of the ethanol production process. He says an ethanol plant the size of the Shenandoah plant can generate an estimated 150-160,000 tons of CO2 and 50,000 tons of algae on an annual basis.
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