NCERC launches new 'Commercialization Through Confidence' website |
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The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (NCERC at SIUE) would like to introduce you to its new and improved website!
Visitors can explore our capabilities through the Facilities page, Meet the Team on the About Us page, or those interested in bringing their research project to NCERC can fill out our client intake form on the Partner With Us page.
“NCERC is proud to launch our newly created and updated 'Commercialization Through Confidence' website," said NCERC Executive Director John Caupert. "This was a total team effort, lead by NCERC Communications and Outreach Specialist Claire Weinzierl. Claire’s efforts were complimented by Marketicity, an agribusiness marketing and PR company lead by NCERC Stakeholder, Gary Most. Perhaps most important, is the creative design team at SIUE University Marketing and Communications, who assisted in creating a dynamic, modern website, which will easily allow for informational updates in a real time basis."
Check out our new website below!
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NCERC attends virtual ABLC 2020 |
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The Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference 2020 was held virtually July 7-10. The three day conference, originally set to take place in Washington D.C., brings together leaders of the global advanced bioeconomy to discuss the opportunities and challenges of industrial movement towards sustainability and renewables.
NCERC Director of Research Dr. Yan Zhang participated in the digital conference, along with nearly 2,400 other attendees.
"ABLC Digital 2020 joined leaders of the global advanced bioeconomy for real dialogue on the opportunities and challenges of this amazing industrial movement toward sustainability and renewables," said Zhang. "The strong existence of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provided updated guidance and support for this industry. NCERC enjoyed seeing that certain veterans in this field are continuing to evolve, and networked with newcomers through Zoom."
The first day of the event was the ABLC Advanced Agriculture Summit. Sessions covered transformative programs and technologies, advanced agriculture and nutrition, biogas and gasification, and more.
The second day centered around ABLC Advanced Markets and Technologies, with sessions covering bioeconomy policy, market perspectives, keynote presentations, and the presentation of the Holmberg Award in the morning. The afternoon held summits such as advanced biofuels, renewable chemicals, sustainable aviation, digital biology, and more.
The final day of the event this year involved the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and other U.S. National Labs to cover efforts to catalyze the bioenergy technology in ABLC: Bioeconomy 2020. This included presentations such as 'Innovations in Biomass Pretreatment,' 'Innovative Sensing Technologies for Biomass and Feedstock Production and Logistics,' 'Marine and Heavy Duty Biofuel Opportunities,' 'AI / Machine Learning in Bioenergy,' 'Lower Carbon Intensity Fuels,' and more.
"Innovative technology scale up is critical for this industry to flourish and the outcries for the need of industry and government are clearly heard, however connecting NCERC, an experienced scale up facility for biofuel and bioproducts, to what's needed is still in the works," said Zhang.
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NCERC releases sponsored project summaries |
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The NCERC at SIUE recently completed two sponsored research projects, one to evaluate the effect of dietary inclusion of DDGS on growth performance and protein digestibility in tilapia, and another testing antibiotic residue levels in DDGS. Each of the projects were funded in part by the Illinois Corn Marketing Board.
DDGS Produced from Illinois as an Ingredient in Nile Tilapia Feeds
The National DDGS Library, established at NCERC in 2007, has provided a representative sample base to understand the nutritional and risk factors in DDGS produced from the U.S. corn ethanol industry. To expedite the usage of DDGS as a common aquafeed ingredient, NCERC collaborated with the Center for Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences (CFAAS) of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and conducted a feeding trial on tilapia using DDGS from a DDGS library contributor. The DDGS originated from one Illinois ethanol plant and were produced under first generation corn to ethanol processing conditions with de-oil in the back end. The DDGS contained about 35% crude protein and 9.3% fat. Red tilapia (Oreochromis sp.) were utilized for the project due to its fast growth, good market acceptance, and high performance in intensive culture systems. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of dietary inclusion of DDGS on growth performance and protein digestibility in tilapia.
Fifteen fish tanks were used for the project and a total of 30 fish were distributed to each tank. Four different inclusion levels of DDGS in the diets, 10%, 20%, 30% and 40%, were tested in addition to the control diet. After 98 days of feeding, results showed that the fish survival rate was high and ranged from 96% to 100% for the fish fed with all diets, and the diet with 20% DDGS inclusion rate demonstrated comparable performance with the control diet, in terms of average weight gain (AWG), specific growth rate (SGR), and factor conversion ratio (FCR). DDGS can be easily included in tilapia diets at levels up to 20% as a practical replacement for soybean meal without jeopardizing tilapia growth performance, feed utilization, and proximate composition, while slightly reducing feed cost.
Survey of Antibiotic Residues in DDGS (2018-2019)
The National DDGS Library at NCERC has provided a representative sample base to understand the nutritional and risk factors in DDGS produced from the U.S. corn ethanol industry. From late 2018 to late 2019, NCERC collected 79 DDGS samples from 33 ethanol plants across 13 states, with the majority of samples coming from Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota. The DDGS samples were ground and tested for the antibiotic residue of virginiamycin M (VM) and S (VS) following an analytical testing method using LC/MS/MS established by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). NCERC collaborated with the SIUE Department of Chemistry for this project.
Results Summary: 18% of the samples had virginiamycin levels lower than 0.001 parts per million (ppm) and 83% of the samples had virginiamycin levels lower than 0.1 ppm. Overall, 98% of the samples had virginiamycin levels lower than 0.2 ppm, and the highest virginiamycin level in DDGS observed was lower than 0.4 ppm.
This study has provided the most recent survey of virginiamycin residue in DDGS
produced from the U.S. corn ethanol industry. None of the DDGS samples showed a virginiamycin level higher than 0.4 ppm, which was less than 2% of the FDA restrictions on virginiamycin in animal feed. The survey provided critical risk factor information in DDGS to support the usage of DDGS in animal feed.
Interested in hearing more about these projects? Please let us know in the poll below if you would be interested in attending a webinar series to learn more about NCERC's sponsored projects and their results.
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Are you interested in attending a webinar to learn more about NCERC's sponsored projects?
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Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference
Virtual
July 7-10, 2020
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2020 AIChE Spring Meeting & 16th Global Congress on Process Safety
Virtual
August 17-21, 2020
Growth Energy Biofuels Summit
Virtual
September 14-17, 2020
Fuel Ethanol Workshop
Virtual
September 15-17, 2020
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National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC)
400 University Park Drive, Edwardsville, IL 62025
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