Brazil's Dedini unlocks ethanol advance
No. 1 sugar and biofuel equipment maker discovers way to make fuel from plant waste.
May 14 2007: 6:50 PM EDT
SÃO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) -- A Brazilian company said on Monday it has come up with a way to produce ethanol on an industrial scale from plant waste, a development that could revolutionize the industry by boosting fuel output without depleting supplies of food staples such as corn or sugar.
Brazil's Dedini, the leading manufacturer of sugar and biofuel equipment, said it has developed an economically viable ethanol production technology based on cellulose.
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"It is cost-competitive with oil at $42 a barrel," said Dedini Operations Vice President José Luiz Olivério at a seminar at São Paulo's Industry Federation, Fiesp.
As cellulose ethanol technology advances and becomes more widely used, it could weaken arguments by critics, such as Cuba's Fidel Castro or Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, that the world's push to produce more ethanol will tax world food supplies and create more global hunger.
Dedini has commercial ties with all of Brazil's 357 sugar and ethanol mills and is the main supplier of co-generation plants, sugar refineries and ethanol distilleries.
Significant shifts in the energy fuels industry could affect the fortunes of ADM (Charts, Fortune 500), BP (Charts), Exxon Mobil (Charts, Fortune 500) and Chevron (Charts, Fortune 500).
Dedini's São Luiz Mill in São Paulo state began producing cellulose bioethanol from bagasse - the leftover cane stalk after the sucrose is pressed out - at about 40 cents a liter in 2002. But production costs have fallen with the improvements in technology to below 27 cents a liter, Olivério said.
Brazil has the world's most advanced biofuels market, with 30 years of experience in national ethanol production. The state-of-the-art ethanol mills can produce the biofuel from cane sucrose at or below 18 cents a liter, experts say.
The bagasse is most often burned in co-generation electric power plants on site to run operations at the mill, or excess is sold to nearby industries such as orange juice processors for burning or to cattle or pig ranchers for feed.
Many of Brazil's cane mills had even installed out-of-date, inefficient blast furnaces so they would not be left with excess bagasse, for which they would have to pay for disposal.
"This will be able to boost a mill's ethanol output by 30 percent without planting one more cane stalk," Olivério said.
He said the technology is based on a chemical acid wash that breaks up the protective lignin fibers in the cane stalk and allows a type of sugar cell to be washed out.
"This type of acid method typically inhibits fermentation of the syrup that comes from the sugars in the bagasse, so mills will have to figure out how to overcome this," said Professor Carlos Rossell at the State University of Campinas, or UNICAMP.
But Olivério said it wasn't a problem as the company's system uses a very diluted acid to free the sugars in the cane.
Enzymes
Many researchers in the area of cellulose technology believe enzymes, or natural proteins that accelerate the breakdown of the lignin fibers, will be used in future cellulose ethanol production.
But Rossell and Professor Elba Bom at Rio de Janeiro's UFRJ University pointed to two challenges: reducing the exorbitantly high cost of industrial production of enzymes and shortening the time required for the enzymes to act on the lignin.
Bom said her research team has been developing methods of leaving shredded bagasse outside in something like a large compost heap to allow naturally occurring enzymes to go to work in a pretreatment stage to loosen the lignin's hold on the sugar, but this requires as much as a week.
"We've already identified the best brews of enzymes, the challenge is bringing down production costs which are currently two to three times the cost of conventional ethanol," Bom said. "We're shooting for 1.5 times the cost of standard ethanol."
CnnMoney.com
No. 1 sugar and biofuel equipment maker discovers way to make fuel from plant waste.
May 14 2007: 6:50 PM EDT
SÃO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) -- A Brazilian company said on Monday it has come up with a way to produce ethanol on an industrial scale from plant waste, a development that could revolutionize the industry by boosting fuel output without depleting supplies of food staples such as corn or sugar.
Brazil's Dedini, the leading manufacturer of sugar and biofuel equipment, said it has developed an economically viable ethanol production technology based on cellulose.
All you need to know about energy
Where it comes from
• Top producers, consumers
• Oil and politics
• What goes into a gallon of gas
Environmental impact
• Calculate your energy use
• Top world CO2 emissions
• Climate change milestones
Alternatives
• Alternative energy sources
• Alternative motor fuels
• Green building goes big
"It is cost-competitive with oil at $42 a barrel," said Dedini Operations Vice President José Luiz Olivério at a seminar at São Paulo's Industry Federation, Fiesp.
As cellulose ethanol technology advances and becomes more widely used, it could weaken arguments by critics, such as Cuba's Fidel Castro or Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, that the world's push to produce more ethanol will tax world food supplies and create more global hunger.
Dedini has commercial ties with all of Brazil's 357 sugar and ethanol mills and is the main supplier of co-generation plants, sugar refineries and ethanol distilleries.
Significant shifts in the energy fuels industry could affect the fortunes of ADM (Charts, Fortune 500), BP (Charts), Exxon Mobil (Charts, Fortune 500) and Chevron (Charts, Fortune 500).
Dedini's São Luiz Mill in São Paulo state began producing cellulose bioethanol from bagasse - the leftover cane stalk after the sucrose is pressed out - at about 40 cents a liter in 2002. But production costs have fallen with the improvements in technology to below 27 cents a liter, Olivério said.
Brazil has the world's most advanced biofuels market, with 30 years of experience in national ethanol production. The state-of-the-art ethanol mills can produce the biofuel from cane sucrose at or below 18 cents a liter, experts say.
The bagasse is most often burned in co-generation electric power plants on site to run operations at the mill, or excess is sold to nearby industries such as orange juice processors for burning or to cattle or pig ranchers for feed.
Many of Brazil's cane mills had even installed out-of-date, inefficient blast furnaces so they would not be left with excess bagasse, for which they would have to pay for disposal.
"This will be able to boost a mill's ethanol output by 30 percent without planting one more cane stalk," Olivério said.
He said the technology is based on a chemical acid wash that breaks up the protective lignin fibers in the cane stalk and allows a type of sugar cell to be washed out.
"This type of acid method typically inhibits fermentation of the syrup that comes from the sugars in the bagasse, so mills will have to figure out how to overcome this," said Professor Carlos Rossell at the State University of Campinas, or UNICAMP.
But Olivério said it wasn't a problem as the company's system uses a very diluted acid to free the sugars in the cane.
Enzymes
Many researchers in the area of cellulose technology believe enzymes, or natural proteins that accelerate the breakdown of the lignin fibers, will be used in future cellulose ethanol production.
But Rossell and Professor Elba Bom at Rio de Janeiro's UFRJ University pointed to two challenges: reducing the exorbitantly high cost of industrial production of enzymes and shortening the time required for the enzymes to act on the lignin.
Bom said her research team has been developing methods of leaving shredded bagasse outside in something like a large compost heap to allow naturally occurring enzymes to go to work in a pretreatment stage to loosen the lignin's hold on the sugar, but this requires as much as a week.
"We've already identified the best brews of enzymes, the challenge is bringing down production costs which are currently two to three times the cost of conventional ethanol," Bom said. "We're shooting for 1.5 times the cost of standard ethanol."
CnnMoney.com
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