By Jack Money
Business Writer
As printed in The Oklahoman, January 18, 2008.

Switchgrass packs an energy-filled punch.

That's the findings in a study published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and members of the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center are happy about it.

The report, authored by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, estimates that switchgrass grown as a source of biofuel in its study produced more than five times more energy than what was needed to grow, harvest and process it into ethanol.

The study lasted five years and used switchgrass fields on 10 farms in three states.

"It was really a very good paper," said Joe Bouton, director of the forage improvement division of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. The foundation is teaming up with researchers at Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma to make up the Sooner State's Bioenergy Center.

"What it showed us is that biofuel made from switchgrass contained about 540 percent more energy than what was consumed to make it," Bouton said.

"And the fact that it was done on a farm really gives a lot of credibility to the study," he said.

One exciting aspect of the research, he added, is that researchers in the study were using varieties of switchgrass that were available in 1999 and 2000.

Research since has given researchers even more fuel-packed varieties of switchgrass since then.

"It looks like this research is just going to improve this grass even further," Bouton said. "For researchers working on this issue in the Northern Great Plains, and for all of us on the Great Plains, this is good news."

According to ScienceDaily, which recently published a story about the study, researchers were looking at switchgrass' net energy output.

The study involved switchgrass fields in Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. It found switchgrass had better greenhouse gas emissions and that biomass leftovers from ethanol production could be used to provide needed energy to distill the product and to fuel other operations of a biorefinery.

In June, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry signed a bill that created the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center to coordinate biofuels research and development at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University and the Ardmore-based Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation.

Oklahoma's Legislature agreed to spend $40 million during the next several years to fund the effort.

Ray Huhnke, a researcher in the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department at OSU, said his colleagues are making great strides in coming up with new varieties of switchgrass. Meanwhile, he continues research intended to reduce the energy requirements for making ethanol.

OSU's research is attacking that problem by evaluating the use of a variety of grasses along with other "underused" biological wastes and residues.

In a system being worked on by both OSU and OU, plant materials are converted into a gas that then is cleaned and cooled, and then exposed to a microorganism that converts the gas into ethanol and other products. The ethanol is distilled after that into a fuel-grade product.

Huhnke said researchers' goal is to reduce ethanol's production costs.

"Plus, we want to make sure we are not compromising the environment," he said.

Yanqi Wu, an assistant professor with OSU's Plant and Soil Sciences school, said the University of Nebraska Lincoln study is an important step toward commercializing ethanol production from switchgrass.

Wu said switchgrass is an exciting crop for ethanol because of its high-yield potential and low-maintenance needs. After its establishment, it doesn't need much fertilizer, water or weed control, and it comes back year after year.

"In almost 15 years, we have developed breeding lines with higher biomass yields," Wu said. "We have developed grass with better genetics."

He said OSU's switchgrass varieties wouldn't adapt to Nebraska, but added, "I think our varieties have better yields than the two available commercial varieties (Alamo and Kanlow)."

Wu said the University of Nebraska-Lincoln study provided very valuable data, especially because it was done in a farm scale test. Normally, we just do a small plot, but theirs were done on lots of land ranging in size from three to nine hectors, and that is good size – very good size.

"It makes the experiment more commercial ... farm level research, very close to commercial use," Wu said.

Lance Lobban, a professor of chemical engineering and director of OU's school of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, agreed the study is an important step toward making ethanol from switchgrass economically possible.

"You get a whole lot more energy that you can use to convert to liquid ethanol," Lobban said. "The study was one more piece of information that is very supportive of using switchgrass ... to create fuel."

This article appeared in The Oklahoman, www.newsok.com, on January 18, 2008.