New Advanced Fuels Center Dedicated
by Tim Leeds (Havre Daily News) A standing-room-only crowd filled a newly re-opened building at Montana State University-Northern to hear dignitaries and university representatives talk about the latest addition to its cutting-edge alternative fuels laboratory.
…The center houses the oil presses and equipment used to convert oilseeds to fuel, as well as testing equipment.
The refurbishment was paid for with a federal grant.
“MSU-Northern’s Bio-Energy Center has already proven itself as a national leader in biofuels research and testing, ” Montana University System Regent Paul Tuss said during the ceremony. “Through this new investment by the federal Economic Development Agency — the second one in the past decade — MSU-Northern is even more equipped to assist agricultural entrepreneurs, and private industry with their testing and commercialization of this.
…Greg Kegel, dean of the College of Technical Sciences at Northern, said the center had received, through grants and industry partnerships, a significant amount of equipment to use in its research.
“We ended up with all this equipment, millions of dollars of equipment, with no place to put it, ” he said. “We needed a building, and this building was vacant. The grant we got from Senator (Jon) Tester helped us rebuild this.
…Jim Rogers, economic development representative of the EDA in Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana, said a constantly discussed topic in his agency is how to directly apply technology developed at Montana’s top-notch universities to real economic development projects, as well as finding jobs to keep the graduates of those universities in Montana.
“If there is a prime example of that, it’s this project right here, ” he said. “It’s bringing together all of the resources using the high-quality students that we are cranking out of these colleges hourly. ” READ MORE
