We can’t do a lot about lightning, but we can work to stop it from propagating.” The ethanol fire back story We have got to find a way to avoid or reduce the scale of these fires. “But this is a more severe case of lightning. “We’ve had some arcs in the past in small storage locations,” said DuPont’s biofuels business head Jan Koninckx, speaking to The Digest from the fire’s location. The fire destroyed more than 10,000 bales – roughly 5,000 tons - of DuPont’s stover repository supporting its Nevada, Iowa cellulosic ethanol operation. “We are hard at work today in partnership with the Zearing fire department and Story County Emergency Management to contain the fire, monitoring it closely, under the direction of local authorities, and are following strict safety protocol to manage it in a contained and supervised manner<‘ the company said in a prepared statement. There were no casualties, and DuPont’s said its first priority is the safety and security of local community members and employees. They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, yet was the fifth Stover fire started by lightning, we reported last week, and the second that hit this facility’s biomass reserve in less than a month. DuPont has multiple storage sites in Story and surrounding counties for the stover that is used as feedstock for its cellulosic ethanol facility in Nevada. The Magic catalyst, the miracle microbe, the super strain, the wonder feedstock, the peerless process.īut it’s after the lightning strikes that we begin what former BP Biofuels chief Phil New called “the hard yards of commercialization” and learn not only what is exciting, but what is needed.įor DuPont, the lightning struck quite literally, when early on the morning of Wednesday, August 17, a suspected lightning strike set fire to a stover bale in Story County, Iowa. Lightning strikes often in the Advanced Bioeconomy.
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