Sugarcane cellulosic ethanol
The world’s biggest maker of ethanol from sugarcane juice, may begin commercial production of the fuel from the tropical plant’s cellulose as soon as 2012, an executive at Dedini SA said.Dedini, the world’s largest builder of mills to process sugarcane, is already producing the biofuel in small amounts from the fibrous waste that is left over when the cane juice is extracted, said Operations Vice President Jose Luiz Oliverio. Dedini is making the cellulose ethanol at the same cost as biofuel from sugarcane juice, he said.
Dedini aims to start building commercial cellulose mills in five years, allowing producers to take advantage of cellulose- rich waste, known as bagasse, to boost output of the biofuel. The breakthrough would let Brazil increase ethanol yields from its sugarcane crop, already the world’s cheapest and most- productive source of the biofuel per acre.
“I’m optimistic,” Oliverio said yesterday in an interview in Sao Paulo. “We are close to getting there.”
In its first experimental project, Dedini produces 100 liters (26 gallons) of ethanol from bagasse a day for about 25 cents per liter, the same as ethanol made from cane juice, Oliverio said.
The larger commercial mills that the company plans to start building in five years could produce 50,000 liters of cellulose ethanol daily, he said.
