Sugar-containing crops

Methyl alcohol, CH2OH, also called wood alcohol or wood spirit, since it was formerly obtained from the destructive distillation of wood. It has also been synthesised from carbon monoxide and hydrogen or by fermentation of various sugar containing crops. Used as a part replacement for petrol in Gasohol to deliver a more environmentally friendly fuel, i.e., from renewable resources. 

Spontaneous fermentation to produce bread, vinegar, soy sauce Fermentation of sugar containing crops to produce wine and beer... 

Sugar can be converted to ethanol based on micro-organisms. Because starch and even celluloses can be converted more or less easily into sugar, such biomass streams are also a potential resource for the production of bioethanol in addition to naturally sugar-containing crops like sugar cane and sugar beet (see Chapters 8 and 9.3). 

Starch- and sugar-containing crops are quantitatively the most important products of today s agricultural system. Most of the existing biorefinery concepts are based on these plants and they are referred to as first-generation feedstock (vide supra), but they also constitute the backbone of human nutrition. General characteristics of this type of biorefinery are listed in Table 1.1. 

The polysaccharide starch is found in most plants as a storage compound however, only five plants, namely maize, rice, wheat, potatoes, and cassava account for the majority of worldwide produced starch-containing plants. Roughly 2.7 billion tons of these crops are annually harvested. The class of sugar-containing crops contains only two plants namely sugar cane and sugar beet of which about 2 billion tons are... 

The use of lignocellulosic materials from agricultural crops for the production of fuels and chemicals has received a considerable amount of interest recently and is a major part of the Advanced Energy Initiative outlined by the President of the United States in both the 2006 and 2007 State of the Union addresses [1]. Currently, ethanol derived from biomass is produced by the conversion of either sugar or starch containing crops. The production of... 

Cellulose materials. These are the most promising raw materials for ethanol production. These materials include crop stalks, forest logging and wood processing residues, straws, paper mill and sugar-containing-cellulose wastes, and parts of solid waste. 

FIGURE 14 Worldwide production of the main sugar- and starch-containing crops. Data taken from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (www.fao.org). 

Well, we use both glucose and fructose as sweeteners in food too. But the economic reason is because the sugar-rich crops (sugarbeet and sugarcane) contain 10-20 times more sucrose than either glucose or fructose, so it s easier to extract and purify. It... 

Alcoholic Fermentation. Certain types of starchy biomass such as com and high sugar crops are readily converted to ethanol under anaerobic fermentation conditions ia the presence of specific yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisia and other organisms (Fig. 6). However, alcohoHc fermentation of other types of biomass, such as wood and municipal wastes that contain high concentrations of cellulose, can be performed ia high yield only after the ceUulosics are converted to sugar concentrates by acid- or enzyme-catalyzed hydrolysis ... 

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