President Dick Jay called the meeting to order promptly at 12:27, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

 

 

Greeters: Dennis Lower and Pinky Ellis were our greeters today and Pinky introduced the members who brought guests:

Martha Rakestraw in honor of Veteran’s Day read us the poem, In Flanders Field:

 

President Dick Jay invited all of our Veterans to stand and be recognized.

Thank you to all of our Veterans!

 

Ronna Boril let us know that Paulann Doane is not doing well, we will be sending her a card. Please keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers.

 

Barry Johnson nominated Jim Porter, Dennis Gazdiewich, Tony Valdez, and Gene Theriaut for helping him move all of the Rotary records to Casper College where they will be sorted and archived.

Brian Deurloo nominated Bill Schilling for purchasing a gutter bin that was installed by Metro Coffee.

Carley Applegate nominated Dave Bruni and Anne Ladd for attending the fundraiser for Wyoming Dementia care a couple of weeks ago.

Brad Cundy nominated Mike Sullivan for being the Emcee at the Boys and Girls Club function.

 

We awarded two Paul Harris fellows today, Steve Loftin PH +3 and Dick Shamley Major Donor and PH + 9.

 

Barry Johnson announced that we are in need of 8 volunteers on Wednesday at 1:30 at Casper College Library to help sort through and clean out the Rotary documents to prepare them so that CC can archive them.

Barry also announced that they found some old Rotary Coffee cups and they are at the back table so if you would like to purchase one they are at least $5.

John Griffith announced that after the meeting we are invited to check out the new seating in the Events Center.

 

Martha Rakestraw introduced our great student of the Month from NCHS, Ben Radosevich, a great young man with a great future.

 

President Elect John Griffith introduced Mark Northam, Executive Director of the School of Energy Resources at UW. Dr. Northam spoke to us today about what the School is doing. He said that because of the rapidly growing sense of urgency about Climate change and the public sentiments against the fossil energy Industry it is becoming harder and harder to navigate the industry. He said that the work they are doing at the School is very essential because they understand the importance of the industry and they are doing everything they can to continue to advance production in the Industry as well as navigate the transition period to different types of energy. He gave us a brief history of the School, it started with the Governor and State leaders in 2006 wanting to establish the School to create technology and knowledge that leverage Wyoming’s natural resources to generate additional revenue opportunities for the State that include supply of clean energy and carbon products. They are very focused on trying to diversify the economy so they are focusing a big part of their program on carbon based products. The School is a separate entity from UW when it comes to funding. Their mission has evolved since the beginning, they focus on maximizing the recovery of the resources including the improvement of recovery of oi and natural gas in mature and unconventional reservoirs. They also are highly focused on maximizing the value and flexibility of coal and natural gas, clean energy solutions and value added products. They have a big program in the arena of managing carbon dioxide emissions and using those emissions to create value and where that is not possible finding safe storage opportunities. They also have a program in developing alternative energy resources and they have recently grown their efforts in producing critical non-energy materials for our energy future, primarily rare earth materials and other scarce materials that are going to be important for storing and or generating energy from non-fossil solutions. One of the Hallmarks of the school is that they have developed some very important public and private partnerships and have benefited greatly from those partnerships over the past 12 years. With the State of Wyoming matching funds for the research and equipment and such this has been a huge advantage for them to be able to bring in more private funding. They have brought in more than $100 million from the private sector to help with all of the programs. They designed, built and equipped the energy innovation center which was the first energy dedicated building that they built on campus followed quickly by the High Bay research facility. Our partners continue to say that investing in the research is one of the best deals on the campus because of the quality of the work and because there is no other School where they can get the partnership with the State like they can in Wyoming. They have different programs that each focus on different areas of the energy industry such as the physics of reservoir flow. Very impressive work they are doing. They study the Physics down to the behavior of the molecules because 40-60% of the hydrocarbons have been left behind and with this knowledge they can get more oil out of the reservoirs than ever before. They started a new program a couple of years ago that has been very active, the Carbon Engineering and Carbon Dioxide avoidance. They are using Coal as a beginning or feed stock to make other things like Carbon graphing, engineered asphalt etc. high value products that will use Coal as a base without burning the coal thus making it useful in other areas other than burning it for energy. They have recently filed for a patent on a comprehensive coal refinery, they have not been awarded the patent yet but feel good about it. They are making products in the laboratory using coal through a deliberate decomposition process where they take the coal apart and use the molecules in the coal much like an oil refinery does, to make products that they can take to market like carbon fiber. Also coatings that can be applied to shed ice, engineered asphalt that will function better in the colder climates to make the roads last longer. Soil amendments that will retain moisture in the soil and also ca be impregnated with fertilizers that will stay in the soil rather than run off with the water. They feel that in the near future they will have a plant in Wyoming that will be producing a range of these products that will add a lot of value to a ton of coal. Carbon Dioxide management is another area they are working with. It is a byproduct of the use of fossil fuels and is the biggest threat to the continued commercial value of fossil fuels. Being able to manage the Carbon dioxide emissions is a very important aspect of their work. The dry fork station in Gillette has become the most flexible research platform for managing emissions in North America and possibly the world. The State has invested in a research facility called the integrated test center. They spent $15 million to construct a research center at the dry fork station that takes a slip stream from the flue gas and makes it available to the people that want to use that to remove the carbon dioxide and demonstrate that they can make products. They are working with the X-Prize organization that gives a large monetary prize to someone who achieves a very difficult outcome, which in this case is creating a useful product from the carbon dioxide emissions. There are 5 different teams from 5 different countries that are working on generating products. It is expensive to capture the Carbon Dioxide but it is more expensive to store it in the ground so hopefully they will create products they can sell. This area at Dry Fork has the three options they need for taking care of carbon dioxide, the plant that they can use to capture the CO2 to make it into sellable products, the oil reserves they can use the CO2 to pull more oil out of and the areas they need for storage of the CO2 when not using it for oil production or making products. This is the only place in the world that has these three things needed so this means a good future for Wyoming. They really have some great things happening at the School and they use all of the different majors across the board at UW. They are also working on a program that focuses on the placement and design of the windfarms in order to get a better return from the wind farms. In the solar energy area they are looking for a more affordable and efficient material for capturing the solar energy more efficiently. They are also looking for supplies of rare earth as well as Lithium in Wyoming among other minerals that they could possibly mine for a better energy industry. Out of all of the research projects he feels that the one in carbon management is the closest to commercialization. Hopefully it will occur soon so that we can keep our coal mines operating by giving them more uses for the coal we mine. A lot of very fascinating work they have going.

 

President Dick Jay concluded the meeting at 1:27 letting us know that next week we will be at the Casper Events Center again and our speaker will be our own Dale Bohren speaking to us about the Casper Star Tribune.

 

“Be the Inspiration”