Thursday, April 22, 2010 - 10:00 AM
9-04

Composition of multiple feedstocks suitable for extended ethanol production at Louisiana sugar mills

Misook Kim and Donal F. Day. Audubon Sugar Institute, LSU Agricultural Center, 3845 Hwy 75, St. Gabriel, LA 70776

A challenge facing the biofuel industry is to develop an economically viable and sustainable biorefinery. The existing potential biorefineries in Louisiana, raw sugar mills, operate only three months of the year. For year-round operation, they must adopt other feedstocks, besides sugarcane, as supplemental feedstocks for biorefineries. Sweet sorghum and energycane have the different harvesting time, but can be processed for producing bio-ethanol using the same processing equipments. Juice of sugarcane contains 13.3% of fermentable sugars, sweet sorghum 12.8% and energy cane 11.3%. Chemical composition of sugarcane bagasse was 38% cellulose, 23% hemicelluloses, and 25% lignin, and for sorghum it was 37% cellulose, 20% hemicelluloses, and 18% lignin, and for energycane it was 43% cellulose, 25% hemicelluloses, and 22% lignin. Calcium hydroxide treatment at 121°C for an hour and cellulosic enzyme hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass resulted in 85% glucan digestibility in sugarcane bagasse, 90% in sweet sorghum fiber, and 72% in energycane fiber. Concentrations of cellulosic ethanol were 220g/kg dry biomass from sugarcane bagasse, 240g from sweet sorghum fiber, and 160g from energycane fiber. Potential biofuel yields from each feedstocks will be presented.

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