Japan brewer pursues 'Monster Cane' ethanol dream

[JohnWxy]

This new variety of sugar cane produces roughly 3 times as much ethanol as other sugar varieties.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1720373/posts


IE ISLAND, Japan (Reuters) - It is three meters tall and productive even in poor soil, it holds up in droughts and typhoons, and it yields twice as many stems as most sugarcane. No wonder they call it "Monster Cane."

This new variety of sugarcane, named for its size as much as its vigor, is grown on a test field on the tiny island of Ie in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa.

When a powerful typhoon swept through the region last month, knocking down trees and houses, the cane was unharmed.
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Asahi estimates the yield of the new sugarcane at 37.4 tonnes per hectare excluding moisture, which can be processed into 7.1 tons of sugar, 4.3 kiloliters of ethanol and 24 tons of bagasse.

This compares with the yield of a conventional cane type at 17.4 tons per hectare, sugar output at 6.9 tons, ethanol production at 1.4 kiloliters and bagasse volume at 7.8 tonnes, which is too small to produce sufficient energy for a processing plant.

The volume of bagasse from high-biomass sugarcane is more than enough to generate energy for the Asahi plant.

[salvorhardin]

1. Here's a link to the original article

For those who don't want to visit Free Republic to read it: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061016/sc_nm/energy_japan_biofuel_ethanol_dc_1