Many people have wondered if harvesting corn stover as a cellulosic ethanol feedstock can be sustainable. Now that cellulosic ethanol producers like DuPont Industrial Biosciences and POET-DSM have several years of testing under their belts, it appears that not only is partial harvest sustainable, it also contributes to a better seedbed and yields the following year.<\/p>\n
This summer, POET-DSM announced that five years\u2019 worth of soil nutrient data gathered at its Project LIBERTY site in Emmetsburg, Iowa, showed biomass harvesting is consistent with proper farm management. POET-DSM is scheduled to begin producing cellulosic ethanol from corn stover on a commercial scale this fall, gradually climbing to a production capacity of 25 million gallons per year. The soil research study was conducted by Douglas Karlen, USDA Agricultural Research Service; Stuart Birrell, Iowa State University BioSystems and Agricultural Engineering Department; and Adam Wirt, POET-DSM.<\/p>\n
The researchers studied soil quality under different biomass harvest scenarios at the site. Their data have been aggregated with 500+ years of additional soil data from four separate sites. The researchers found that stover harvest can be sustainable on fields with slopes of less than 3% with consistent grain yields of at least 175 bushels per acre. Nitrogen and phosphorus applications should not need to change when harvesting stover at one ton per acre, but the researchers did recommend that farmers monitor potassium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many people have wondered if harvesting corn stover as a cellulosic ethanol feedstock can be sustainable. Now that cellulosic ethanol producers like DuPont Industrial Biosciences and POET-DSM have several years of testing under their belts, it appears that not only is partial harvest sustainable, it also contributes to a better seedbed and yields the following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[3762,1185,4191,8400],"class_list":["post-23078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-dupont-industrial-biosciences","supplier-iowa-state-university","supplier-poet-dsm","supplier-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23078"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=23078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}