Updated: 11/5/2009 9:32:02 AM
East Tennessee scientists and farmers are pairing up for a major project, and Wednesday, they harvested some of the fruits--or grass, more directly--of their labor.
When the 40-acre field beside the former K-25 site was seeded a few years ago, it was never intended for a biofuels plant.
"Planting it for ethanol was not our original goal. Our original goal was to avoid cost with routine field maintenance and create a more natural environment at the business park,"said CROET Facilities Improvement Coordinator Bob Greenwell.
However, when Governor Bredesen announced a $70-million biofuels project, plans changed.
"We took about half of our project and converted it to mono-culture switchgrass, looking down the road that it might become a cash crop," Greenwell said.
CROET, or Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, manages much of the project, but they receive assistance from other organizations like Oak Ridge National Lab.
The switchgrass will serve as an alternative to corn, which grows in limited quantity and is necessary for food.
"So we're looking at other crops, like switchgrass, to supplement the amount of ethanol we really need to make our country self-sufficient from foreign oil," said Mark Downing of ORNL.
The field will yield about 5 to 8 tons of dry material per acre and will continue to sprout new switchgrass for 15 to 20 years without reseeding.
Ethanol is only one by-product of the project. The farmers growing and harvesting it are another.
"Farmers are really interested in looking for alternative sources of income on land they're not using for commodity crops," Downing said.
Their work may go far beyond the ethanol plants.
"The University [of Tennessee] is looking at a process to pelletize switchgrass so you can burn it in a pellet stove for homes, in biomass boilers, in power plants," Greenwell said.
Plus, the work brings the K-25 site back to its past.
"This land used to be farmland," Greenwell said.
The swithgrass harvested today will be bailed Friday and find its final destination at the new biofuels plant opening in Vonore later this year.
