“Stover is produced in huge amounts, on the scale of petroleum,” said Whitehead Institute Member and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) biology professor Gerald Fink. “But there are enormous technical challenges to using them cheaply to create biofuels and other important chemicals.”

Now, a new study from Fink and MIT chemical engineering professor Gregory Stephanopolous led by MIT postdoctoral researcher Felix Lam offers a way to more efficiently harness this underutilized fuel source. By changing the growth medium conditions surrounding the common yeast model, baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and adding a gene for a toxin-busting enzyme, they were able to use the yeast to create ethanol and plastics from the woody corn material at near the same efficiency as typical ethanol sources such as corn kernels.

Like corn kernels, corn stover is full of sugars such as glucose, fructose and sucrose that can be converted to ethanol through the use of microorganisms. But these sugars within the cellulose molecules are bound together in chains and wrapped in fibrous molecules known as lignins. Breaking down these tough casings and disassembling the sugar chains results in a chemical mixture that is challenging for traditional fermentation microorganisms to digest.

To help the organisms along, workers in ethanol production plants pre-treat high-cellulose material with an acidic solution to break down these complex molecules so yeast can ferment them. A side effect of this treatment, however, is the production of molecules called aldehydes, which are toxic to yeast. Researchers have explored different ways to reduce the toxicity of the aldehydes in the past, but solutions were limited considering that the whole process needs to cost close to nothing. 

Faced with this economic and scientific problem, industries have cut back on creating ethanol from cellulose-rich materials. To tackle the toxin problem, the researchers decided to focus on the aldehydes produced when acid is added to break down tough molecules. 

The team began looking for genes that specialized in converting aldehydes to alcohols, and landed on a gene called GRE2. They optimized the gene to make it more efficient through a process called directed evolution, and then introduced it into the yeast typically used for ethanol fermentation, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. When the yeast cells with the evolved GRE2 gene encountered aldehydes, they were able to convert them into alcohols by tacking on extra hydrogen atoms.

The resultant high levels of ethanol and other alcohols produced from the cellulose might have posed a problem in the past, but at this point Lam’s past research came into play. In a 2015 paper from Lam, Stephanopoulos and Fink, the researchers developed a system to make yeast more tolerant to a wide range of alcohols, in order to produce greater volumes of the fuel from less yeast. 

By combining this method with their newly modified yeast, the researchers were able to efficiently make ethanol and even plastic precursors from corn stover, miscanthus and other types of plant matter. 

“We were able to produce a high volume of ethanol per unit of material using our system,” Fink said. “That shows that there’s great potential for this to be a cost-effective solution to the chemical and economic issues that arise when creating fuel from cellulose-rich plant materials.”

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While the foot or more of heavy snow that blanketed much of the province over the Thanksgiving weekend has melted, saturated fields continue to limit corn silage harvests and hay cutting.

“Feed supplies were already a challenge moving into the storm, and the storm definitely won’t help,” said Carson Callum, general manager for Manitoba Beef Producers.

After dealing with drought conditions earlier in the year, many rural municipalities in central and western Manitoba had already declared states of emergency in August due to poor hay crops.

Looking across the province “it’s fairly dire, as far as the amount of feed available,” said John MacGregor, extension support with the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association.

“We didn’t get a great first cut, and didn’t get much of a second cut,” he added, noting the rains and snow in September and October will limit how much of a final cut comes off.

The ground freezing up would allow producers to get on the field, but alfalfa would lose all of its leaves in that scenario, said MacGregor. There may be some grass they can harvest, but he noted it would be difficult to dry the grass down at this time of year.

“We kept wishing for rain, and now that we have it… ‘Be careful what you wish for,'” said MacGregor.

Corn silage was going to be a saving grace for many producers and make up for the hay shortfall, he said, but the silage harvest has been stalled at about 30 to 40 per cent complete.

Grain corn producers with poor crops may be looking to take some off as silage instead if it looks to be more profitable, but they are facing the same terrible harvest conditions.

Straw from annual crops and stover from the grain corn harvest could also be alternate feed sources, but with the wet fields, MacGregor said grain farmers may not want their fields rutted up any more.

Given the tight feed situation, “we will likely see some herds reduced throughout the province, just because the price of hay is fairly high and the availability of alternative feeds is not as available as guys would like,” said MacGregor.

“It will be a struggle for a lot of guys.”

Callum also expected to see herd downsizing and calves moved to market earlier than usual.

“We’re still assessing the situation, and producers are trying to stay resilient and help out their neighbours as best as they can,” said Callum.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin reports for MarketsFarm, a Glacier FarmMedia division specializing in grain and commodity market analysis and reporting.

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The Cellulosic Sugar Producers Co-operative (CSPC) has reached more than half the acres it needs to supply a new plant with biomass from wheat and corn stover.

Brian Cofell, general manager of the CSPC says that is a significant landmark for the co-operative which will be owning the plant with Comet Biorefining.

“For us we’re going to consider that a real victory,” he says.

Farmtario Editor John Greig talked to Cofell at the London Farm Show about the products coming out of the plant and the challenges with balancing the amount of biomass coming off the fields and maintaining organic matter.

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The co-op will be supplying the biomass to a proposed $70 million Comet Biorefining plant to be built in Sarnia. Farmers, through the co-op, will own about 30 per cent of the plant and will work in partnership with Comet Biorefining to create dextrose for use in chemicals and plastics.

“What it is really about is building a market for an underutilized crop residue,” says Dave Park, president of the CSPC, and a Sarnia-area farmer. Modern corn hybrids, with their significantly stronger stalks that stay green longer, have created crop production challenges for farmers. Many farmers have resorted to mowing corn stalks and then tilling by discing, vertical tillage, strip till or mouldboard plowing in order to get a proper seedbed to plant soybeans the next year.

Removing a portion of the stover — and getting paid for it — could be an alternative.

The CSPC held two field days recently in southwestern Ontario to introduce the co-operative to curious farmers and to show off the equipment that will be used by the co-op to harvest and manage the bales of corn stover and straw.

At the field day at Brad Goodhill’s farm near Warwick, a drizzly day didn’t stop farmers from watching the equipment supplied by Advantage Farm Equipment. A Fendt tractor pulled a Hiniker flail chopper as it created 40-foot windrows. It was followed by a Massey Ferguson 2270 HD baler dropping three foot by four foot by eight foot bales which will usually weigh 1400-1600 pounds.

It was followed by a ProAG bale accumulator that picks up 12 bales per run and can pile them easily at the end of the field. The equipment is mostly the same as the equipment currently used to harvest bales for cellulosic ethanol plants in the United States.

The co-op hopes to source about 55,000 acres of corn stover and wheat straw within about an hour’s drive of Sarnia. The co-op will cut and harvest all of the stover and straw itself. Farmers are already busy at this time of year, says Park, so they won’t have to invest in the time and equipment to harvest the stover. Harvest of the stover by the co-op will also assure the bales that come into the plant will be consistent.

Farmers and interested groups have been working on the biomass co-op concept for almost four years. It has had the support of local farmer grain handling and retail co-ops Agris Co-operative and Wanstead Farmers Co-operative, along with support from lenders, government, farmer organizations, BioIndustrial Innovation Canada and La Coop Fédérée from Quebec.

“This is what is called a closed co-op,” says Jim Campbell, secretary of the CSPC and general manager of Agris Co-operative. “You have to be an investor in the co-op to deliver biomass into the plant.

“We didn’t want to be just another commodity supplier into a plant. The farmers should own it.”

Luckily, Andrew Richard, one of the founders of Comet Biorefining, had the same vision.

“One of the first things we said is we just don’t want to buy stover from a bunch of farmers, we want to partner back along the value chain,” he said.

That made sense to the farmers and farmer organizations who organized the co-op.

“Who’s kidding who, $4.30 corn is no fun for any of us,” said Park. “So if we can add value to $4.30 corn per bushel without having to put more costly inputs into the ground, I’m all for a value-added opportunity.”

The business plan calls for farmers to start delivering biomass in 2017.

The deal:

– Farmers who want to sell wheat straw or corn stover through the co-op to Comet Biorefining will have to invest in it.
– Farmers will have to invest $500 for a membership share, and $200 per acre for each acre in their supply agreement. – – Farmers will be asked to commit at least 100 acres, with 1.5 tonnes of stover produced per acre. If they can’t produce that much stover, they will have to procure it from another source.
– Farmers will be paid about $40 per tonne of wheat straw and $25 per tonne of corn stover, so on average a $42 per acre return at 15.5 per cent moisture.
– As owners, farmers will get a variable return on their investment that will depend on the price of dextrose, which is indexed to glucose sugar price. Glucose sugar is affected by the price of corn and has a floor price in the market based on ethanol production. Campbell says the investment in the plant should return about $20 per acre.
– Farmer investments will be held in escrow until the construction of the plant begins. Other funds will be used for development of the concept until then, which Campbell says is rare in the co-op development world.

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