University of Illinois: Sugarcane biodiesel more economical than soyabean

A team led by University of Illinois researchers has published a study detailing the economic benefits of this sugarcane oil relative to soyabean oil in biofuel production.

The team altered sugarcane metabolism to convert sugars into 12% lipids, or oils, which could be used to produce biodiesel, wish an ultimate goal to produce 20% oil.

Oil cane has additional advantages that have been engineered by the team, including increased cold tolerance and more efficient photosynthesis, which leads to greater biomass production and even more oil.

"If all of the energy that goes into producing sugar instead goes into oil, then you could get 17 to 20 barrels of oil per acre," said Stephen P. Long, University of Illinois crop scientist and lead investigator on the project.

"A crop like this could be producing biodiesel at a very competitive price, and could represent a perpetual source of oil and a very significant offset to greenhouse gas emissions, as well," he said.

In their analysis, the team looked at the land area, technology, and costs required for processing oil-cane biomass into biodiesel under a variety of oil production scenarios, from 2% oil in the plant to 20%.

These numbers were compared with normal sugarcane, which can be used to produce ethanol, and soyabean.

An advantage of oil cane is that leftover sugars in the plant can be converted to ethanol, providing two fuel sources in one.

"Modern sugarcane mills in Brazil shared with us all of their information on energy inputs, costs, and machinery. Then we looked at the US corn ethanol industry, and how they separated the corn oil. Everything we used is existing technology, so that gave us a lot of security on our estimates," Long said.

The analysis showed that oil cane with 20% oil in the stem, grown on under-utilised acres in the southeastern US, could replace more than two-thirds of the country's use of diesel and jet fuel.

This represents a much greater proportion than could be supplied by soyabean, even if the entire crop went to biodiesel production.

Furthermore, oil cane could achieve this level of productivity on a fraction of the land area that would be needed for crops like soybean and canola, and it could do so on land considered unusable for food crop production.

The current full production cost of biodiesel from soybean is $4.10 per gallon, but using oil cane instead could decrease the cost to $3.30 per gallon for 2% oil cane and to $2.20 per gallon for 20% oil cane.

The ethanol produced from 1, 5, and 10% oil cane would add to the cost benefit.

"We need to start building for a future when gas is no longer as low as $1.50 per gallon, and we need to avoid any future dependency on other countries for our oil. We are lucky to have the land resources to do this and, in doing so, to ensure that future generations have a supply of oil that is domestic and renewable," Long concluded

The article, “Techno-economic analysis of biodiesel and ethanol co-production from lipid-producing sugarcane”, appears in Biofpr.