Blogs written by Lee Enterprises Consulting Bioeconomy Expert(s)
Cellulosic agricultural residue is a broad term used to discuss cellulose based residues left after the harvest of a primary agricultural crop. These include everything that we would traditionally think of, such as corn stover, wheat and rice straws, bean stubbles, and potentially even some cover crops. Additionally, residues can take the form of forestry…
Environmental compliance has become an increasingly significant part of bio facility operations and planning. Frequently, the operation of a facility is dependent on complying with regulatory programs and laws at both the state and federal level. Environmental permits are often a critical path to authorizing construction and operation of new or modified facilities. Once environmental…
Air Permitting in Bio Projects? Renewable energy resources are all around us. You may have passed by a windmill, a solar farm, an oilseed processing/biodiesel facility, or a biofuel facility – all of these are sources of sustainable energy, using resources that are naturally replenished (wind, sun, plants, and agriculture). Industrial facilities that process renewables are…
Forestry feedstocks utilized in the renewable industry include woody biomass such as: logging residue (e.g. slash, saw dust), forest management waste (e.g. wildfire mitigation, diseased tree removal), and dedicated energy forestry crops (e.g. poplar trees and willow stands). A sustainable future requires solid forest management practices to maintain habitats for wildlife and minimize the devastating…
Agricultural Feedstocks for the renewable energy industry include starch and sugar crops (e.g., corn, sorghum), grass crops (e.g., switch grass, miscanthus), oil crops (e.g., soybean, sunflowers), and crop residues (e.g., corn stover, corn cobs, nut shells). Agricultural feedstocks can create sustainable paths by using marginal croplands to generate energy products, and by adding value or…
Food production experts are often asked about the regulatory differences between human food and animal feed. A simple starting point is to note that according to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the term “food” applies to food for both humans and animals. Also, many of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations are the…
Forest biomaterials are a class of solid materials derived from trees and shrubs. Forest biomaterials are a source of renewable products that offer many benefits in terms of abundance, low density, strength, cost, easily shaped or used and performance. Obvious examples include building products, furniture and paper board, but the list also includes high-tech materials,…
What is the role of a nutritionist in ethanol production? Is a trained consulting nutritionist valuable to those producing ethanol? Let’s ask the more basic questions first. When producing biofuels, does one concurrently produce “co-products” or “by-products”? To the untrained, the difference might seem only a matter of semantics. To the experts, however, the reality…