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Brazil May Be First Producer of Economical Cellulosic Ethanol
4 June 2007
Cattlenetwork. Brazil may be one of the first countries in the world to produce cellulosic ethanol economically, according to participants at a São Paulo, Brazil ethanol conference.
Feedstock costs alone account for a full 75% to 80% of the cost of ethanol produced from residual biomass, whether it comes from sugarcane, wood chips, switchgrass or corn husks, said Isaias de Carvalho Macedo, a researcher at the country’s Interdisciplinary Center for Energy Planning, or NIPE, at the University of Campinas.
At the same time, Brazil already has much of the logistical infrastructure in place to collect the excess sugarcane mass, or bagasse, which will also cut down on initial costs, said Helena Chum, a senior adviser at the US National Renewable Energy Lab, or NREL.
Brazil, which produces conventional ethanol from sugarcane, is the world’s lowest-cost ethanol producer and the leading ethanol exporter.
If new ethanol technologies take off, Brazil could almost double its ethanol output—set to hit over 20 billion liters in the ongoing 2007-08 season—to 36 billion liters per harvest, without expanding planted area beyond its current 6 million hectares, said Nilson Zaramella Boeta, the head director of Brazil’s leading private cane research center, the Center for Cane Technology, or CTC.
June 4, 2007 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
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Posted by: Max Reid | June 05, 2007 at 10:47 AM
This is very good news. They used the sugarcane stalks after crushing as fuel for the process plant. But if they could gasify to SNG, or take it to methanol or ethanol, it would be a real money maker. Even taking the stalks and using acid or enzymes to break down the cellulose and fermenting and then gasify the remains would really get a lot of fuel our of every acre.
Posted by: sjc | June 05, 2007 at 12:56 PM
Hi Sic
what is SNG. I have CNG (Compressed Natural Gas)
and LNG (Liquified Natural Gas)
Is it something like SNG. Still it has to be either Compressed or Liquified. Is that correct.
Posted by: Max Reid | June 05, 2007 at 05:37 PM
I think Brazil may jump into Bio-Butanol program as well.
Posted by: Max Reid | June 05, 2007 at 05:38 PM
SNG stands for Substitute or Synthetic Natural Gas. In other words, methane. You can make methane by gasifying biomass to producer gas, processing to synthesis gas and then processing to methane. Just Google SNG+methane.
Posted by: SJC | June 05, 2007 at 06:36 PM
Deforestation and land-use change is still a very real concern if biofuels continue to grow as they have. We'll be getting more out of each acre but we'll need a lot of acres to make a significant dent in fossil fuel use.
Posted by: Scatter | June 06, 2007 at 03:32 AM
You are right, with the 1 billion tons of biomass estimated available as waste we could produce maybe 100 billion of the 150 billion gallons of fuel that we would need by the time they are online. That only 2/3 of the fuel we would use, but it would be a start. (just replacing gasoline in the U.S.)
Fuel crops would take more than 100 million acres. We have almost 90 million acres now in corn and another 50 million in switchgrass to preserve the soil. It would take land and a real commitment, but we could make a difference.
Posted by: SJC | June 06, 2007 at 08:33 PM
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Excellent.
Doubling the yield or producing twice in the given land area.
It should also reduce the overall Ethanol cost. Those who cried about deforestation will be pushed to the back.