A biorenewables complex set to begin construction next August will give a new home to the department of agricultural and biosystems engineering and the office of biorenewables programs.

Construction on the first of a three-building biorenewables complex will begin in August 2008. The building will be the biorenewables research laboratory.

Robert Anex, professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering and associate director of the office of biorenewables programs, said the building should be completed in December 2009.

The complex is set to be located between Howe Hall and the College of Design.

Anex said the new facility will provide a number of benefits.

“We will having teaching, research, and extension all in the same building,” Anex said. “We will also have a unique large teaching lab.”

Anex said the new space will house research laboratories and the Sloan Center for the Biobased Products Industry.

The research laboratory will focus on several areas including corn, biofuels and biorenewable transportation.

Anex said the program areas were originally chosen because they were identified as areas in need of research by a Department of Energy study.

Anex said Iowa State looks at the entire bioeconomy production system.

“What Iowa State does particularly well is we have researchers that think about the right type of feedstocks to grow and how to transport and store it,” Anex said. “There will be more feedstocks more appropriate for where you are and what company you are and what you want to make.”

Funding for the biorenewables research laboratory was allocated by the state Legislature last spring. Once funding is secured for the other two buildings, construction will begin. However, some funding must come from private support.

Virgil Elings, a 1961 ISU alumnus in mechanical engineering, donated $5 million to the project in September 2006. The John Deere Foundation donated $1.25 million in April 2007.

Jay Harmon, professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, said it will probably be 2009 before the Board of Regents asks the Legislature for funding.

The total private support that has been raised to date for the ABE facility is $6,642,227.37 according to an e-mail from Kim Kindvall, associate director of communications at the ISU Foundation.

One of two engineering buildings will be named Elings Hall, in honor of the donation made by the ISU alumnus.

Harmon said a new facility is necessary because the program has outgrown its current location in Davidson Hall.

“We’re in about four or five buildings spread out just because we’ve outgrown the department that we have,” Harmon said. “The industrial technologies programs have become part of our program, so teaching-wise, we’re really short on being able to handle the students we have.”

Harmon said that space is needed for more research.

“We’ve got faculty that are working on ways to improve ethanol production,” Harmon said. “We’ve got some that are working on harvesting different biological components and processing those to make energy. So those are growing areas that require space that we just don’t have.”

Davidson Hall was built as a temporary building following a fire in the 1940s. Keith Fortmann, ISU Foundation’s executive director of development for the College of Engineering, said groundwork for a new ag and biosystems engineering building has been going on for a number of years.

“We finally had the opportunity to move forward in fundraising and planning for this new ABE building, and this was going on at a time when obviously biorenewables is a huge issue in Iowa State meeting its land grant mission,” Fortman said.

Fortman said putting the office of biorenewable programs and the department of agricultural and biosystems engineering together was a good fit.

“The biorenewables program and the ag and systems engineering departments are just a natural fit together,” Fortman said. “Their areas of interest overlap a great deal, one relies on the other a great deal, so it was natural for us to put these two together.”