Student Employees and Staff Complete Safety Training at BCRF

On Jan. 5, the BioCentury Research Farm (BCRF) hosted an Iowa State University safety training day for 16 new student employees and staff as well as current BCRF users. 

Safety training is an ongoing, important activity at the BCRF, and at the start of each semester, Iowa State's Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) offers a day of safety training at the BCRF. Ryan Wyllie, EH&S occupational safety specialist, and Scott Jarmon, EH&S fire safety specialist, instruct and train BCRF users on safe work practices, standard procedures and how to identify and prevent safety issues in the work place. Trainees are taken throughout the facility and grounds to look at applications where safety precautions will actually take place during their work. Specific site training is given at the BCRF for emergency procedures as well as specific equipment and shop training.  

Here is a breakdown of the BCRF's safety and training record since 2009:

• Zero — The BCRF and its users have achieved and maintained a high standard of safety and have not experienced any lost-time injuries.
• 750,000+ hours have been logged without a lost-time injury.
• 100% of BCRF users are up to date on their safety training—an outstanding accomplishment for a facility of this size and capacity.
• 33 — The number of graduate students that have worked at the BCRF.
• 44 — The number of Iowa State staff that have worked at the BCRF.
• 214 — The number of undergraduate student employees that have worked at the BCRF.
• 75 — Current users at the BCRF including graduate students, undergraduate students and staff.

BEI Continues to Work on Autothermal Pyrolysis at BCRF

The Bioeconomy Institute (BEI) researchers are continuing their work on the autothermal pyrolysis pilot system located in the BCRF's Thermochemical Processing Train. Autothermal pyrolysis is BEI's latest breakthrough in thermal deconstruction of biomass into biofuels and biochemicals. They are developing the basic technology and are working to demonstrate it on a commercial scale. In autothermal pyrolysis, only air is used as the fluidizing gas. As a result, the energy for pyrolysis is provided through partial oxidation of pyrolysis products within the reactor, thereby eliminating the heat transfer bottleneck of conventional pyrolysis. BEI recently published information on their web site and a new video that explains the process. Read more