A one-day presentation can bring you up to speed on a dynamic and often confusing biofuels industry. Listen to related podcast below.
Austin, TX – Emerson Process Management is hosting a series of regional summits across the U.S. to address key factors and recommendations necessary to ensure the successful commercialization of alternative fuels, specifically second-generation biofuels. Link and listen to a related podcast, below.
The next Emerson Alternative Fuels/BioRefinery Summit will be Thursday, March 19, in Denver, CO, followed by summits in Atlanta, GA, in April and Houston in May. Emerson kicked off the series in December in Madison, WI. Your correspondent attended this first meeting, and you can read two blog postings prompted by the event:
Emerson’s Biorefinery Summit
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Alternative fuels industry leaders and investors, academia, and other third-party experts are invited to attend the summits. The discussion includes how to tackle the challenge of translating alternative fuels technology into large-scale production of renewable and eco-friendly transportation fuels or energy for refineries, chemical plants, pulp mills, and other industries. Recent estimates suggest the U.S. could produce enough ethanol to displace nearly a third of all gasoline use by 2030, assuming companies demonstrate and implement commercially viable methods for turning non-edible biomass, such as garbage, wood waste, or sawgrass, into liquid fuels.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced up to $25 million to advance the development of technologies and processes to produce next-generation biofuels. In addition, the USDA recently announced its first-ever loan to a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol refinery.
“Emerson has a track-record of helping companies with complicated processes successfully lower their costs and risks of production, improve uptime and reliability, and provide certainty and predictability during new and somewhat uncertain operations,” said Alan Novak, director of alternative fuels for Emerson Process Management. “It’s our hope these summits will provide opportunities to share best practices and real-world experiences to help pave the way for a successful biofuels industry.”
Presenters for the Denver summit include:
– T. Randall Fortenbery, director of the RENK Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who will discuss feedstock challenges for advanced biorefineries.
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The Emerson Alternative Fuels/BioRefinery Summit is Thursday, March 19, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel Denver-North, 8773 Yates Drive, Westminster, Colo. Space is limited. More information and registration is available online.
–Edited by Peter Welander, process industries editor. Control Engineering News Desk
