The report presents the outcomes of the Biogas from Sugarcane project, which has identified opportunities to reduce fossil fuel use across the sugar industry. Project activities have advanced the project concept based on the use of sugarcane trash and / or bagasse as a bioenergy feedstock, with the potential to be converted into fuels, to replace diesel in sugarcane transport, and in the future, in sugarcane production.
Report extract
The Biogas from Sugarcane project addresses an opportunity to reduce or completely replace the use of fossil fuels in sugarcane transport with biomass derived fuels from sugarcane processing by- products, and hence reduce production costs, increase revenue, reduce GHG emissions from sugar production and improve the sugar industry sustainability and viability.
The project concept is based on the use of sugarcane trash and / or bagasse as a bioenergy feedstock with the potential to be converted into fuels to replace diesel in sugarcane transport and in sugarcane production. In this project, sugarcane trash is anaerobically digested to produce biogas and upgraded to compressed biomethane. The residue from this process, known as digestates, is converted to a diesel-like fuel via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL).
The project was undertaken in four stages with pilot scale demonstration of the associated technologies in each project stage and include:
- Assessing the supply chain for sugarcane harvest residues including a novel system for separating trash from sugarcane;
- Developing and demonstrating biomass pretreatment and anaerobic digestion technologies to produce biogas;
- Demonstrating the upgrading of biogas to biomethane for use as a renewable transport fuel in sugarcane production and transportation; and
- Developing and demonstrating a process for the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of digestate to convert organic wastes to diesel-like fuel for use in the factory for process heating or upgrading to renewable diesel.
