Iowa Startup Turns Basketball Court Into Aviation Fuel

When workers ripped up the historic basketball court at Iowa State University's Hilton Coliseum, most people saw memories and memorabilia. Three researchers saw something better: the future of clean aviation fuel.

Rise Energy, a startup founded in 2022 by Iowa State scientists Tannon Daugaard, Jordan Funkhouser, and Ryan Smith, took chunks of that old hardwood floor and fed them into their truck-sized bioreactor. Hours later, they had diesel fuel that could power an engine.

The demonstration proved their point. If a basketball court can become fuel, so can almond shells, grass clippings, sawdust, and sorted trash.

The science behind Rise Energy builds on a decade of research at Iowa State, but with a crucial twist. Most biofuel reactors seal waste in airless chambers and require huge amounts of external energy to break it down. Rise adds a small amount of oxygen that lets the waste generate its own heat as it converts, making the whole process run itself.

That self-powering design means their reactors can be smaller and cheaper to operate. Instead of trucking waste hundreds of miles to a massive processing plant, farms and factories could have their own on-site units. The waste never leaves home, and neither does the value it creates.

The process produces three useful products at once. Phenolic oil becomes fuel for diesel engines or aviation. Biochar locks carbon into the soil as fertilizer. And sugars get refined into other valuable chemicals.

Rise has already run a test reactor for Stine Seed, a private seed company near their Iowa State home base. The team is now designing modular reactors that can be mass produced and placed wherever biowaste piles up.

The Ripple Effect

The potential reaches far beyond Iowa cornfields. Aviation fuel remains one of the hardest parts of transportation to decarbonize because planes need energy-dense liquid fuel. Rise's process could turn agricultural waste from anywhere into jet fuel, helping airlines reduce emissions without redesigning their entire fleet.

Local economies could benefit too. Instead of paying to haul away waste, farms and sawmills could turn disposal costs into revenue streams. Rural communities sitting on mountains of corn stalks and wood scraps might be sitting on fuel refineries they just haven't built yet.

Smith and his cofounders spent nearly two decades asking one question: how do we make this practical enough to actually use? Their answer fits on a trailer and runs on garbage.

The old basketball court that once echoed with cheers now powers engines, proving that yesterday's waste can fuel tomorrow's progress.