Our Past meetings

For our first meeting of the fall season, we toured the new Wyffels Hybrids Distribution Center just east of Ames.  

Bill Wyffels Sr. and his wife Alma started a seed business in 1946.  The business grew and became very successful with the headquarters now in Genesco, Illinois.  Wyffels seed corn is planted on well over a million acres in the Corn Belt.

To better serve the western portion of the Corn Belt, Wyffels has built a new Distribution Center which opened in July of 2024.

We met at 3E in Windsor Heights. Jim Bolstad gave a presentation about his recent experience with having his ankle repaired with a custom-fabricated 3-D printed titanium prosthetic bone scaffold. He had similar prosthetic examples that he passed around to examine. 

 We toured the KCCI studios in downtown Des Moines. The station traces its roots back to 1955 when KRNT TV began transmitting. The station’s callsign was changed to KCCI TV in 1974. In 2009 the station transitioned from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting. The transmitter is located at Alleman, Iowa. 

 For our first meeting of the fall season, we met at the Ankeny Airport for a presentation by Mr. Greg Long.  He took us on his journey of dreaming, building and flying an airplane. There were many dreams, many doubts, many unknowns but finally success. We learned the ins and outs of his experience in building his Van’s RV-12 aircraft plus the certification, flying and testing. 

Steve Martin, Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University, spoke about improvements to Lithium-Ion Batteries.  Lithium-Ion Batteries are found almost everywhere – laptops, phones, electric cars, etc.  Sometimes this type of battery overheats or catches on fire.  Maybe even explodes.

We toured an installation of a Revolving Algal Biofilm System for treating the wastewater for the City of Slater.  This innovative technology uses vertical moving belts to grow algae on the belt surface.  The growing algae removes nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The nutrient-rich algae produced through this process is harvested and used for fertilizer.

We celebrated the Holiday Season with fellowship, an excellent meal, and evening entertainment.  This was our traditional Engineers Club celebration at the Des Moines Golf & Country Club.  The entertainment was “Hot Off the Grill” which is a duo consisting of Cindy Grill, a premier Des Moines Blues and Rock vocalist, and Dennis Kain, a veteran finger style and slide  guitarist.

Three companies have proposed to build hazardous carbon pipelines across Iowa.  Landowners, environmentalists, and local governments have banded together to oppose the Summit, Navigator, and Wolf carbon pipelines.  Jess Mazour, Sierra Club Iowa Chapter, gave an overview of the carbon pipeline proposals, the reasons so many are opposed, and the latest updates on the status of the carbon pipeline projects.

We had a presentation on Des Moines Concours d’Elegance™.  The Concours is an automotive exhibition held annually at the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines.  It features vintage and classic motor vehicles.  This year the exhibition will be held Sunday, September 8, 2024.  There will be no admission charge.

We toured EFCO’s Concrete Construction and Forming Institute.  Economy Forms Company (EFCO) is a world leader in designing and building forms for pour-in-place concrete structures. Their products are used in the construction of stadiums, bridges, high-rise buildings and water treatment facilities around the world.  The Institute is a state-of-the-art education and training facility for EFCO’s customers to demonstrate how to effectively and safely use EFCO’s products.

We joined the Central Iowa Section of the IEEE for a tour of the PowerFilm manufacturing plant in Ames. 

PowerFilm designs and manufactures custom solar cells, panels, and power solutions for energy harvesting, portable, and remote power applications using proprietary thin-film or high-efficiency crystalline PV technology.  PowerFilm develops high-quality custom solar solutions for IoT, transportation, military, and consumer applications. 

We toured the Arnold O. Chantland Resource Recovery Plant in Ames.  The plant was the first municipally owned and operated waste-to-energy facility in the nation and opened for business in 1975. The plant receives garbage/refuse from Ames and the surrounding communities in Story County.

Metal is extracted by magnets and recycled. The burnable portion of the garbage/refuse becomes Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) and is burnt in the power plant. The remainder is sent to a landfill.