Lab at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College considered the first of its kind in the Southeast.
Researchers at the lab "will provide convenient, cost-effective testing of biodiesel to assure quality products are going to market," says Sam Brake, of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture Bioenergy Research Initiative, located in Oxford.
"Consumers will be assured they're getting high-quality product," says Brake, who added that the N.C. Department of Agriculture awarded the project a $150,000 grant. "Long-term, it should help boost demand and production."
Biofuels are petroleum fuels that include organic material such as vegetable oil or corn.
"Having a lab here decreases the testing-turnaround time so it increases biofuel companies' ability to release batches (of fuel for customers)," says Sarah Schober, senior director of A-B Tech's BioNetwork, a program throughout the North Carolina community college system that focuses on biotechnology and life sciences.
A-B Tech contributed $60,000 to the project, notes Kathi Petersen, interim director of operations for
AdvantageWest, a Fletcher, North Carolina-based nonprofit that is an economic-development organization serving Western North Carolina.
The lab's opening is the fruition of two years of work that began in part because of the closing of the Biofuels Center of North Carolina in Oxford, which had its funding halted in June 2013. The center offered the initial $150,000 that the state Department of Agriculture ultimately disbursed, Brake explains.
"Until now, biofuels companies had to send their batches out of state to labs in places like Iowa or Oregon," Brake says.
AdvantageWest managed the $150,000 in Department of Agriculture grant funds.