Manufacturing accounts for about $28 billion in Kentucky’s economy, making it a close second place after government as an economic driver, with health care ranking third. And these days perhaps more than ever, the cost of energy is a critical factor in sustaining successful manufacturing businesses.
That’s why the Kentucky Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has expanded its third Energy Conference from one day to two full days, to be held on May 14 and 15. It is touted on the KAM website as “Kentucky’s only energy conference designed by manufacturers, for manufacturers.”
“We want to get into more depth with these programs,” said Greg Higdon, CEO of KAM. “Energy will be an ongoing thing that manufacturing will have to look at. We have to pay attention to it to remain competitive nationally and internationally. Kentucky is huge in the automotive industry.”
In a time of rising energy costs and deepening concerns regarding climate change, the conference brings together energy producers, suppliers and consumers for presentations, workshops and discussions on best practices and technologies to bring increased energy efficiency in the large-scale operations of manufacturing. Underlying the conference is the idea of sustainability — sustaining the economic viability and profitability of manufacturing enterprises as well as reducing damaging impacts on the environment, the bedrock of our sustenance. Another focus of the conference will be renewable fuels, said Molly Sutherland of Sutherland and Associates, who is coordinating the conference.
The conference’s focus on energy resonates with the America’s Energy Future (AEF) study, begun in 2007 and recently completed by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. A number of reports have emerged from the massive AEF project that involved a host of scientists from numerous disciplines, industries and organizations. The main report, over 700 pages, titled America’s Energy Future: Technology and Transformation, is available for free download from the National Academies Press website. That report finds “a steadily growing consensus that our nation must fundamentally transform the ways in which it produces, distributes, and consumes useful energy.”
The search is on to find renewable fuels to counter the dependence on foreign oil. KAM has also recognized the concern.
“Logistics and fuel costs are always issues,” said Higdon, speaking about the transportation challenges for manufacturing concerns. “You will always have the four components of rail, water, air and trucking.”
One of the alternative and renewable fuels discussed in the report is biodiesel produced from algae. Business Lexington spoke with Bruce Pratt, director of the Center for Renewable and Alternative Fuel Technologies (CRAFT) at Eastern Kentucky University, to find out how CRAFT’s research and development with algae-derived biofuel has progressed since its founding four years ago.
“We’ve been fairly fortunate with decent funding,” said Pratt. “We’re trying to develop alternatives to fossil-fuel dependence.”
CRAFT has an ongoing contract since its founding with the Defense Logistics Agency of the Department of Defense. The military is looking for an alternative source for jet fuel. Pratt said that commercial airlines have also become interested in alternative/renewable fuels, because Europe will be introducing regulations that will require planes landing in airports there to have a certain percentage of renewable fuel in their tanks or face fines.
“Biofuel will burn much cleaner than conventional petroleum diesel,” said Pratt. “You don’t have nearly the amount of NOx [nitrous oxide], and it burns almost at the same efficiency as petroleum.”
Forty acres of EKU property are planted in switchgrass, a tall-growing grass native to Kentucky. The switchgrass provides biomass for sugar production to feed the heterotrophic algae grown in darkness at laboratory scale. Pratt said that their technology has been proven at lab scale, and they are ready to scale up the process with a pilot plant that would produce 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of biodiesel per year. That pilot plant would cost $7 million. Funding sources CRAFT has identified require cost share of 20 to 50 percent.
“We just don’t have those resources to do that cost share,” said Pratt. “We’d like to find a corporate partner.”
He said they are working some angles on that. Meanwhile, CRAFT has received funding to scale up their technology for breaking out sugars from the biomass. He also said other directions for research include the production of bio-plastics, as well as materials for use in electronic components.
Pratt pointed out that commercial trucking, barges and trains could all run on bio-diesel. And the bio-derived oil can also be converted to jet fuel. The AEF report notes that bio-diesel can be distributed through existing infrastructure and used in unmodified diesel-engine vehicles. Pratt mentioned UPS, with one of its centers in Louisville, as being very interested in alternative fuels. He said that CRAFT’s research and development, along with other bio-fuel projects, are about where corn ethanol technology was 10 to 15 years ago.