Ethanol plant designer touts sorghum

The principal scientist for the nation’s leading designer and builder of ethanol production plants gave his praise to forage sorghum production as a way to expand biofuels use.

Dr. Rob Meyer, principal scientist at ICM, Colwich, Kan., spoke to the National Sorghum Producers/Sorghum Improvement Conference of North America bi-annual conference at the Commodity Classic Feb. 26 at Grapevine, Texas.

Forage sorghum is a good fit for producers as an annual crop, Meyer told the producers and scientists in attendance, as it uses traditional planting and harvesting equipment and that, unlike perennial crops, producers likely know already how to grow the crop with successful yields in the first year of production.

Mayer admits that there’s situations that may hamper some producers from making forage sorghum a crop of choice for ethanol production.
“One of the things ethanol plants need is a consistent run of feedstock,” Mayer said. “You can’t mix and match different stocks, like square bales and round bales. You can’t wraps or strings. Another question, do you put sweet sorghum in billets or do you chop it before you take it to the ethanol plant.”

Producers will need to have consistent quality of product, which means producers will need to be “variety sensitive” to make sure these plants have good quality feedstocks.

“The good thing is that we in sorghum have better varieties right now than other biomass crops,” Mayer said. “The traditional approaches to fertility and current supplies of good herbicides available make sorghum a good choice for producers to enter the ethanol area.”

By
Larry Dreiling