Sugar potential holds sweet promises

Louisiana has the potential of becoming a center of biofuel creation and distribution. While remaining strong in oil and gas production, part of the state’s sugar-cane crop is in line to become a major alternative energy source.

The USDA Agricultural Research Center in Houma and the LSU Audubon Sugar Institute in Baton Rouge have been working together, along with chemical research and oil companies, to produce and test a high-fiber sugar cane to be used as fuel.

“We are calling them feed stocks for the biofuel industry,” USDA acting research leader Michael Grisham said. “We released several varieties, but one particular variety (HO 02-113) has been picked up by bio-energy companies that actually have pilot plans.”

While emphasizing the USDA center is still primarily a research location for sugar cane used to produce sugar, Grisham revealed that as a side study it has been working on energy-useful stocks since the mid-1960s.

“We have been making crosses between sugar cane and its wild relatives to try to bring in new genes,” he said. “These wild plants typically have a high-fiber content and low sugar. Usually they are very vigorous. If we are going to make it into sugar cane, we keep crossing it to a sugar type. This [feed stock] is just the opposite. Energy companies have become interested in high-fiber cane varieties because they have high bio-mass.”

The LSU Audubon Sugar Institute has received a USDA 5-year, $17.3 million grant to research sustainable bio-products. The initiative is a regional program for the production of multiple agricultural feed stocks and the processing of those stocks into biofuels, bio-based chemicals and bio-products.

LSU ASI technology expert Ben Legendre said the sugar-cane product, dubbed “energy cane” demonstrates a great deal of promise. In turn, Louisiana is positioned to become a leader in biofuel development.

“I think that is one of the reasons why the Department of Agriculture thought the project developed by the Audubon Sugar Institute was valid,” Legendre said. “We feel we are strategically located to provide not only the infrastructure for energy cane and sweet sorghum that can be converted into these biofuels and biochemicals. We have the refining capabilities here. We have the pipelines here. We have the know-how here and all the folks we need to work with that would be part of what we are trying to do.”

The science behind sugar cane not only offers different ways the product can be used, in comparison to corn, but also a difference in what the raw product will produce.

“For [manufacturing] sugars, the process is like distilling for alcohol,” Grisham said. “This [energy cane] is more of an enzymatic process that breaks down the fiber content. That has been a hold-up in the industry. Whoever comes up with the best enzymes that can economically break this stuff down is going to be ahead in the industry.”

“Our company plays a small role in that we have the capability of taking some of the most promising advanced and elite energy cane lines, developed by public breeding programs, from a few plants and mass propagating them to various bio-processing projects,” Kleentek (a division of Certis USA) spokesman Jeff Flynn said.

Flynn said energy cane is being developed specifically to maximize biomass content into a usable biofuel. “The significance is that these crops [not intended for sugar production] have virtually no value outside a bioprocessing facility,” he said. “Energy cane, while one dimensional in potential, has the advantage [over corn in that] it will be much more productive in producing plant matter per acre and more flexible in exploiting more marginal growing acres not very suitable for food crop production.”

When it comes to energy cane, researchers have already developed forms of sugar-cane varieties that produce 25 percent fiber compared to 10 percent in commercial farms of sugar cane. This fiber then can be converted to biofuels.

“With corn, the amount of energy it takes from a bushel of corn is not close to what you get with sugar cane,” Grisham said. “With one unit of corn you get 1.5 units of energy, but with sugar cane it is one unit to 8 units of energy.”

Legendre said in Louisiana many mills have long used sugar-cane byproduct to produce their own energy. Today, some have been able to use that material to generate electricity at their plants and provide electrical service on community grids.

“Most of our factories in Louisiana are energy self-sufficient,” Legendre said. “We have several sugar cane factories generating electricity for that factory and selling electricity to the grid [with regular cane biproducts]. We have been using biofuels for 200 years to fire boilers, now we are using it to produce electricity.”

Researchers are working with energy cane to determine not only what electrical service it can generate, but how it can be used within the oil industry.

“We have taken and treated cellulous and produced 74 gallons of ethanol for every ton of bone-dry fiber,” Legendre said. “If we can get the cost down to be competitive with oil we will be that much better off,” Legendre said. “There is still a question of economics because of the process involved with converting cellulous to a usable biofuel like ethanol or butanol.”

Researchers said transforming energy cane to butanol is preferred because ethanol is hydroscopic and absorbs water to the degree that it ultimately cannot be used as fuel.

“You can’t put ethanol in a pipeline because it will absorb water and it cannot be used as a motor fuel,” Legendre said. “Whereas, butanol it is not hydroscopic. It is more like gasoline. You can mix it with gasoline and you can put it in a pipeline with gasoline because it is a more stable component.”

BP is among the petroleum corporations working on alternative fuel prospects to fulfill a federal mandate that by 2040 all new passenger vehicles will be powered by alternative fuels. The company has been looking into cellulosic biofuels, including energy cane, at its 1.4 million gallon process demonstration facility in Jennings since 2009.

According to a report offered by BP, the demand for energy is expected to grow by 45 percent during the next 20 years, with biofuels playing a role in meeting consumer demand.

“Biofuels must be low cost,” BP Biofuels North America President Sue Ellerbusch said in a printed statement. “Biofuels must be low-cost. Our benchmark for success is $1 a gallon, so that the biofuels we make can compete with oil without any subsidy by 2022.”

According to BP estimates, biofuels would be competitive with gasoline based on an $80 a barrel equivalent. The company said while it leaves oil price speculation to the market and intentionally avoids such predictions, this objective could be reached within a decade providing all plans flow smoothly.

A second goal for the use of biofuels, according to Ellerbusch, is that they be low carbon with reduced emissions by 60 percent of current levels. The BP executive said mass production of biofuels will make the product scalable and that the bio-fuels must also be sustainable.

Flynn and Legendre agreed, conversion technology for biofuels is ready. The next challenge according to producers is manufacturing a practical product and getting it to a public market.

Producers, developers and distributors concur Louisiana has the resources to drive this sector of alternative energy.

South Louisiana is known for its sugar-cane production for food products. Researchers have now developed a high-fiber energy cane that is being developed for use as an alternative energy fuel.

MIKE NIXON | TRI-PARISH TIMES