Calculation of the environmental benefits of sugar cane for fuel ethanol production

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed calculation of the environmental benefit associated to the use of sugar cane for the production of fuel ethanol in a diversified ethanol distillery that is devised to operate as an agroindustry. From the consideration of the several stages of the production process such as biomass production, transportation of cane from the field to the factory, ethanol production, bagasse combustion, anaerobic digestion of vinasses and combustion of generated methane, and combustion of ethanol in automotive vehicles, it is shown that the use of sugar cane is environmentally beneficial because it involves the removal of 22,639 ton / year of CO2 from the atmosphere and the incorporation of 15,244 ton / year of O2 into the atmosphere, for a distillery with a production capacity of 40,000 L / day of fuel ethanol. Also, a calculation is made for the amount of CO2 that would be incorporated into the atmosphere if natural gas were used in the distillery for the generation of electricity by means of a combined power cycle.