Nature gave us oil from algae; perhaps we should try Nature’s way again
Content derived from Wikipedia article on Bagasse
Bagasse (sometimes spelled bagass) is the biomass
remaining after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract their juice.
A sugar factory produces nearly 30% of Bagasse out of its
total crushing. Many research efforts have attempted to use bagasse as a
renewable feedstock for power generation and for the production of bio-based
materials.
Bagasse is often used as a primary fuel source for sugar
mills; when burned in quantity, it produces sufficient heat energy to supply
all the needs of a typical sugar mill, with energy to spare. To this end, a
secondary use for this waste product is in cogeneration, the use of a fuel
source to provide both heat energy, used in the mill, and electricity, which
is typically on-sold to the consumer electricity grid.
The resulting CO2 emissions are equal to the amount of CO2 that the sugarcane plant used up from the atmosphere during its growing phase, which makes the process of cogeneration appear to be greenhouse gas-neutral. However when a full audit of energy used in production is done, 75% of the energy required to grow and move the sugar cane (including bagasse) is from liquid fuel (petroleum or hydrocarbon based), leading to a 25% net gain from photosynthesis.
Ethanol produced from the sugar in sugarcane is a popular
fuel in Brazil. The Cellulose rich bagasse is now being tested for production
of commercial quantities of cellulosic ethanol.
Agave bagasse is a similar material which consists of the
tissue of the blue agave after extraction of the sap.
Related topics @ Wikipedia
Biofuel
Further reading
The Potential of Bagasse-Based Cogeneration in the US, Kevin
Ho, Columbia University, 2006.
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse
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This page uses material from the Wikipedia article Bagasse
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