Bagasse as Biofuel Feedstock
Research study will evaluate the use of Florida bagasse as a feedstock for bioenergy manufacturing in Florida. Via University of Florida: Bagasse is the fibrous plant material that remains once all of the juice has been squeezed from the sugarcane stalk. Bagasse consists mostly of stalk fibers but
also contains leaves and other biomass components that were brought to the mill by harvest trucks or railcars. Bagasse is about half water and half dry matter (plant material). In Florida, most bagasse is burned as fuel for the mills. ... ... "Although bagasse is a valuable fuel, there is strong commercial interest in upgrading its value by converting it to ethanol. Demand for ethanol is driven by the President’s call to boost annual ethanol and other alternative fuel production to 35 billion gallons by 2017 and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. FIU and FCC will investigate promising pretreatment processes for bagasse conversion to sugars that can be readily fermented to ethanol and will scale up those findings to a pilot facility to assess the feasibility of commercialization of the bagasse-to-ethanol technology." ...
Via Florida International University: FIU and Florida Crystals to develop ethanol technology