By Cat Holmes

University of Georgia

Skyrocketing oil prices, a sharp increase in the cost of natural
gas and imminent war with Iraq have experts and industry leaders
taking a harder look at alternative fuels.

Biofuels – those made from vegetable and animal byproducts
instead of petroleum – and the feasibility of producing them in
Georgia were recently addressed at the Georgia Biofuels Symposium
held on the University of Georgia campus.

“With over 600 gas stations in the U.S. charging more than $2 per
gallon for gas, a reliance on foreign countries for 60 percent of
the oil we use, and a host of negative environmental
consequences, there are compelling reasons to pursue the
commercial production of biofuels in Georgia,” said Dale
Threadgill, head of UGA’s agricultural and biological engineering
department in the UGA College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences.

Georgia’s significant forest and agricultural resources may give
the state an advantage in what some believe will be a booming new
biofuel industry.

“In the same way that petroleum refineries transformed the 20th
century, biofuels will transform the 21st century,” said keynote
speaker Helena Chum of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
in Golden, Co. “Georgia has a lot of potential to become a leader
in this field, as we move from a petro-economy to a bio-economy.”

A new fuel at the pump

Two problems – poor air quality in cities and depressed farm crop
incomes – might make biodiesel production a unique opportunity
for the state, said John McKissick, an agricultural economist
with UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
McKissick recently completed a feasibility study on biodiesel
production in Georgia.

“Biodiesel could make significant reductions in certain exhaust
emissions, improving air quality,” McKissick said. “And
generating income from animal fat and spent vegetable oil could
be a boon to our poultry and farm industries.”

Georgia annually produces about 55 million gallons of oilseeds
and animal fats from which biodiesel could be produced.
According to McKissick, these are the most economical sources for
biodiesel in Georgia.

A big advantage of biodiesel is that existing diesel engines and
equipment don’t need to be altered in order to use it. “B-20 (a
product made of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent diesel) can
go right in the same gas tanks, using the same engines,” he
said.

However, McKissick estimates that even under the most ideal
circumstances, biodiesel costs 9 cents more per gallon to produce
than petroleum diesel. This could easily be remedied by a federal
subsidy, similar to the one in place for the production of
ethanol, another type of biofuel, produced mainly in the Midwest
from corn, he said.

New sources of electricity

For electrical production, biofuels are more expensive than coal,
but not by much, McKissick said. “If you used the most efficient
technology, a bio gasifier, at the largest optimum scale, a ten
percent subsidy would make it competitive with coal in the
long-term,” he said. “This is a commercial technology that’s
already being used in other parts of the country.”

According to McKissick’s studies, Georgia’s most likely sources
of biomass for electrical production are chicken litter, pecan
hulls, cotton gin trash, wood chips and forestry waste products,
all by-products of Georgia’s largest industries and crops.

“It often costs companies to dispose of these products,” he said.
“So making biofuel out of them takes something of negative
economic value and generates a positive.”

UGA was the site of an important biofuel feasability study when
the entire campus was heated for six weeks last winter using
animal fats, oil and grease, said Tom Adams, the UGA engineer who
headed the project.

“No modifications were made for the 1950s vintage boiler and no
unusual problems or odor complaints occurred,” he said. “The
construction costs were $31,000 and fats are a renewable
resource, with the U.S. producing about 11.6 billion pounds of
animal fat each year.”