M-40 to 136th Avenue on north end of Hamilton, go west 5 miles on 136th, farm on south side just before 58th Street. Bio-based fuels, including soy diesel and corn ethanol, last week got a boost from the White House. President Clinton signed an executive order to promote new technologies and research to allow increased usage of bio-based fuels. In Michigan, where 2.65 million acres of corn were planted in 1997, ethanol is the focus of an upcoming workshop, slated for Sept. 27 in the Lansing Center, Lansing. Parris said he hopes the meeting will help build momentum for attracting an ethanol production facility to the state of Michigan - just one of eight states to host the ethanol meeting series, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, in conjunction with the MDA and the Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services.
Ethanol is an oxygenate, a substance that adds oxygen to gasoline to make it burn more cleanly.
In 1996, the federal government began mandating that certain states blend gasoline with oxygenates to help fight smog. It is common for gasoline to blended with 10 percent ethanol and, where there are high traffic volumes, the addition of an oxygenate is a required to reduce air pollution. Availability of the higher blends of ethanol is rare but the number of E-85 pumps is increasing. Ethanol could replace its petroleum-based cousin MTBE as the preferred gasoline oxygenate across the country by the end of 2004, according to a government study. It calls for an increase in production to 3.3 billion gallons from current levels of about 1.6 billion gallons.