Sugar cane, ethanol production from

Ethanol and distilled spirits are produced from various renewable raw materials such as fruits, grapes, grain, sugar beet, and sugar cane, and even from waste materials like pomace and other fermentation residues thus, production of spirit drinks, especially distilled spirits, is based on further essential issues and components of sustainability ... 

Worldwide ethanol production in 2005 was about 30 million tons (lOGgal), of which 90% was from only two countries, Brazil and USA, each with 13.5 million tons. Brazil gets more than 30% of its transport fuels from sugar-cane ethanol. The production in the EU was much lower, about 0.5 million tonnes, mainly for manufacturing ETBE. The EU target in biofuels is 5.75% in 2010, composed of 2/3 ethanol and 1/3 biodiesel [1]. 

For both the cases of methanol production and the use of vehicle-mounted gasifiers, additional investments will be associated with facilities and equipment for harvesting and transport of the biomass to the conversion sites. In the case of ethanol production from currently produced sugar cane juice or molasses, the conversion facilities would be constructed adjacent to sugar mills that already are receiving the biomass raw material. Thus, additional investments for harvesting and transport equipment would not be required. 

Polyethylene is produced from ethylene gas, which is produced from ethanol. Brazil is a world leader in the sugar cane-based production of ethanol (—> 2.23). The first bio-polyethylene plant (with a capacity of 200 thousand tons a year) was opened in 2009 in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. If the price of petroleum, the usual feedstock, is above 50 per barrel, the technology is profitable. The priee of petroleum has been higher than 100 a barrel since 2010. Vinyl ehloride and PVC can be produced from bioethylene readily, and such a process is already used in India. It may sound odd, but as long as there is salt in the oceans, chlorine, hydroehloric acid and PVC are renewable resomees... 

Braskem is currently the main actor for the production of bio-PE. The Braskem s bio-PE is produced from sugar cane ethanol in order to satisfy its production capacity of 200 000 tons per year, it uses arable land estimated at 0.02% of all the available land in Brazil. Further developments in bio-based polyolefin concern bio-polypropylene (PP) obtained through the metathesis of the ethylene dimer. 

Both in the USA and the EU, the introduction of renewable fuels standards is likely to increase considerably the consumption of bioethanol. Lignocelluloses from agricultural and forest industry residues and/or the carbohydrate fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) will be the future source of biomass, but starch-rich sources such as corn grain (the major raw material for ethanol in USA) and sugar cane (in Brazil) are currently used. Although land devoted to fuel could reduce land available for food production, this is at present not a serious problem, but could become progressively more important with increasing use of bioethanol. For this reason, it is important to utilize other crops that could be cultivated in unused land (an important social factor to preserve rural populations) and, especially, start to use cellulose-based feedstocks and waste materials as raw material. 

Currently, ethanol is produced from sugar beets and from molasses. A typical yield is 72.5 liters of ethanol per ton of sugar cane. Modem crops yield 60 tons of sugar cane per hector of land. Production of ethanol from biomass is one way to reduce both the consumption of erode oil and environmental pollution. Domestic production and use of ethanol for fuel can decrease dependence on foreign oil, reduce trade deficits, create jobs in rural areas, reduce air pollution, and reduce global climate change carbon dioxide build-up. 

It should be pointed out that the raw materials for VAM and its related polymers (i.e. ethylene and acetic acid) are produced from fossil resources, mainly crude oil. It is possible to completely substitute the feedstock for these raw materials and switch to ethanol, which can be produced from renewable resources like sugar cane, com, or preferably straw and other non-food parts of plants. Having that in mind, the whole production of PVAc, that nowadays is based on traditional fossil resources, could be switched to a renewable, sustainable and C02-neutral production process based on bioethanol, as shown in Fig. 3. If the vinyl acetate circle can be closed by the important steps of biodegradation or hydrolysis and biodegradation of vinyl ester-based polymers back to carbon dioxide, then a tmly sustainable material circle can be established. 

Table 10.1 gives a summary of the main by-products of fermentation by yeasts and other microbiological activities which can be identified in distilled spirits from different raw materials, like fruits, wine, grain, sugar cane, or other carbohydrate-containing plants. Since the sensory relevance of a flavour compound is related to its odour thresholds and odour quality. Table 10.1 presents also odour qualities and a review of threshold values of the fermentation by-products in ethanol solutions [9-10] and/or water [11-14] (Christoph and Bauer-Christoph 2006, unpublished results). 

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