Three Nebraska farmer-inventors have developed equipment to harvest corn cobs and other biomass that will be sought for cellulosic ethanol production.

The inventions were described at last week's Biobased Industry Outlook Conference at Iowa State University in Ames.

"Just a handful of us are suffering through the challenges to get (a biomass harvesting) system figured out," said Ty Stukenholtz. He and his twin brother, Jay, have been working on inventions that remove cobs and other residue from the field for 11 years.

The biggest challenge is that corn harvest can't be slowed.

"Harvesting corn has to be the priority," Ty said. "Farmers can't take the chance that their $4 crop will be lost in the field."

The brothers farm some of their own ground and also custom harvest in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. They've sold cobs for industrial production, for feed and bedding and to burn for energy.

"We have a lot of experience in trucking, grinding, and we've even bagged cobs for one outfit," said Ty.

The Stukenholtz brothers farm in southeast Nebraska where the ground is hilly and pulling a wagon behind the combine doesn't work well, Ty said. The brothers have ag engineering degrees from the University of Nebraska. Their patented and trademarked invention, the Residue Recovery System, is a custom-built add-on that can be used with any combine. The Residue Recovery System consists of the CleanBoot and the TopTank. The CleanBoot is attached to the back of the combine and uses power created by the harvesting process to capture the desired material as it falls through a specialized sieve. Unwanted residue is ejected. The cobs travel to a U-trough auger and beater, then into an air stream up to the collection TopTank. The TopTank is mounted at the top of the combine's original grain tank. It is specifically sized to fill at the same rate as the grain tank and is designed to move laterally past the harvesting head for unloading. The controls for the collection tank run off the original factory hydraulics on the combine handset. The brothers have partnered with Beth Pihlblad to form Ceres Agriculture to promote their machinery and harvesting services. They are fine-tuning the equipment to harvest various types of residue. The machinery will be in limited production in 2008.

Vernon Flamme, a North Bend, Neb., farmer and entrepreneur, invented his Cob Caddy 12 years ago when a company approached him about developing something to collect cobs directly from the field. The Cob Caddy is an easy-to-use addition to the combine that collects the cobs as they exit with the stalks and husks.

At $45 to $50 per ton, cobs can boost a farmer's income, Flamme said. A field that yields 160 bushels of corn per acre can produce 1,600 to 2,000 pounds of cobs per acre. The Cob Caddy, which costs $90,000, will pay for itself long before the combine pays for itself, Flamme said, and it will last longer.

Flamme, who said he has an engineering degree from the "college of hard knocks" explained his first design, which bolted onto the combine, affected combine resale value and also made it impossible to switch back and forth between corn and beans during harvest. That eventually led to the pull-behind model. Cobs are moved from combine to wagon on conveyor belts. The cobs drop into the wagon and the stalks are sucked out. The Cob Caddy is equipped with a 100-horsepower Kubota engine. A hydraulic lift raises the wagon 14 feet and six inches and can dump 4 to 5 tons of cobs into a trailer in about one minute without leaving the cab. The Cob Caddy is remote-controlled.

Flamme said his biggest cob customers have been cattle feeders, but cobs will be sought by renewable energy producers.

"If you're not collecting cobs you're throwing money out the window every time you come into the field," Flamme said. "We're always able to sell every cob collected."

The Stukenholtz brothers and Flamme said that the corn cobs are the least valuable component in corn-crop residue. For corn-on-corn operations, the cobs left on the field tie up nitrogen and increase fertilizer costs.

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