BioCentury facility will search for alternatives to petrol products

The $19 million BioCentury Research Farm — the first one of its kind — is now open for business.

The facility, an integrated biomass production and processing center, will hold its grand opening on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. The farm is the first in the nation to research methods of production, harvesting and transportation, storage, thermochemical and fermentation technologies, and biomaterials, all at one site, said Larry Johnson, director of the BioCentury Research Farm, professor of food science and human nutrition and director of the Center for Crops Utilization Research.

“This is the only one in the world,” he said. “This is a radical mindset change as much as it is a facility. The research that goes on out here requires a very different thinking process than classical research that we’ve done in the past, we think systems.”

The four buildings on the farm’s 1,100 acres will lead to research on how the nation can use biomass instead of petroleum to create products, Johnson said.

“Anything you can make from petroleum, I can make from plants,” he said. “It’s a matter of economics.”

He said the College of Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Business and even the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will contribute to the site’s research and processes. Horticulture students have already contributed to the planning, planting and maintenance of the plants and flowers grown at the site.

“The BioCentury Research Farm is really important to Iowa State, the Department of Economic Development and several private companies such as Pioneer and others,” said Wendy Wintersteen, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Wintersteen said the facility’s goal is to consider the planting, growing and harvesting of biomass in the most positive and environmentally friendly ways.

“It’s really state-of-the-art and first in the nation to take that integrated approach,” she said.

Production— Research plots are available at the site to test plant breeding, genomics (genomes of organisms), cropping systems, soil conservation and nutrient management.

Harvest and transportation— A building to develop and research new technologies to efficiently harvest and transport biomass will allow researchers to study the technologies year-round.

Storage— Two buildings are designated to research the drying and storage processes for crops. Johnson said the BioCentury Research Farm will focus primarily on corn, soybeans, switchgrass, miscanthus, sorghum, fast-growing trees — like cottonwood, aspen and poplar — and prairie grasses, but he said the possibilities for research are “almost limitless.”

Biochemical Processing Facility— This facility will include researching pretreaments, fermentation, ethanol recovery strategies, conversion of biomass to bioproducts and bioprocessing.

This building will allow large-scale research; gasifiers may process up to five tons per day. The bioprocessing area of the building will house the research about biolubricants, soil nutrient recycling, biocomposites and other areas.

Andy Suby, manager of the BioCentury Research Farm and associate scientist at the Center for Crops Utilization Research, said he is excited for the opening of the facility.

“Here we bring it all together,” he said. “I’d like to see the collaboration between all the different units that go into biomass and that’s what I’m excited about.”

“Anything that we can get out of here to show productivity” is Suby’s main interest, he said.

Sam Jones, associate scientist at the Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies, said he’ll initially be able to work with six graduate and six undergraduate students at the new facility in the thermochemical processing unit. He said more students may eventually help with the research efforts.

“We can do a lot of fundamental work on campus and this provides us with a place to come and do the next scale so we can actually start to scale things up and to see how things change as we scale,” he said.

Jones said the BioCentury Research Farm will provide space to build a type of heating called a fast pyrolyzer and a gasification unit which will help convert biomass into synthetic gas.

Johnson said businesses and schools will have the opportunity to conduct research at the site, but will have to pay a fee.

A small business incubator will also be a part of the site’s operations.

The facility is located at 1327 U Ave., a quarter of a mile south of Highway 30, about five miles east of Boone.