Voting people helping people

What Happened at June 3 Meeting.

The group approved the fish survey. 

Cal Leman explained the Making Gas in Salmon for Salmon idea, which is described on this website. 

We discussed the first steps to make this happen.  Craig and Annette will find what help we can get from Horizons and from the university.  Bethany will talk with a sugar beet farmer.  Cal has sugar beet seed for a half acre to seed a test plot in Salmon this year.  We need to plant the beets now.

A critical step in this process is growing the sugar beets.  The tons per acre and the sugar content are critical to the success of this project, the difference between 500 gallons of ethanol per acre and 1000 gallons per acre.  The difference between 70 cents per gallon and $2.36 per gallon of ethanol produced.

The fermentation is a critical step to convert the sugar water to an ethanol water solution.  The dilute ethanol-water solution produced is stable, and will the same, when cellulosic ethanol or any other feedstock becomes available.  The distillation will be the same.  And our use of the ethanol will be the same, no matter what the source of the ethanol.  The distiller can run constantly from the stable ethanol-water solution produced.

Salmon can be the first to make ethanol from sugar beets in the USA.  Columbia, the United Kingdom and other countries are making ethanol from sugar beets. 

 

Producing Ethanol

A big company cannot produce ethanol any better than a small company. Corn is not the only feedstock. The big company must transport the feedstock and the product.  A 150,000 gpy plant in Salmon needs to transport nothing. We can make the ethanol here and burn it here.  We don't have to buy fuel from anywhere else.  And we don't have to pay whatever price the oil companies want to charge.

 The heat given off from the distillation can heat the fermentation area and any other structure with the heat.  The shredded beets, after the sugar is removed, are feed for cattle.  The plants use carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.  When we burn ethanol we make carbon dioxide from that oxygen and make water.  The carbon use is balanced: We don't make more than we remove.  The process is ecologically balance.  We throw away nothing.

To get started, we may get help from a grant.  If people in Salmon want to be self sufficient, this is a way to do it, just as the saw mill in town did years ago.  If you or anybody you know sees this as an opportunity to invest in, then maybe we don't need a grant to get started.