Abstract
There are four main waste products produced during the harvesting and milling process of sugarcane: cane trash, molasses, bagasse and mill mud–boiler ash mixture. This study investigates the value proposition of different techniques currently not being adopted by the industry in the utilisation of these wastes. The study addresses the technical challenges and the environmental impact associated with these wastes and comes up with some recommendations based on the recent findings in the literature. All the biomass wastes such as bagasse, trash (tops) and trash (leaves) have shown great potential in generating higher revenue by converting them to renewable energy than burning them (wet or dry). However, the energy content in the products from all the utilisation methods is less than the energy content of the raw product. This study has found that the most profitable and challenging choice is producing ethanol or ethanol/biogas from these wastes. The authors recommend conducting more research in this field in order to help the sugar industry to compete in the international market.
Highlights
One of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is to meet the global energy demand while maintaining environmental sustainability
The results showed that 24 h butanol fermentation of sugarcane bagasse hydrolysate by Clostridium beijerinckii (TISTR 1461) provided the highest butanol concentration of 0.27 g/L
This is happening in other countries; for example, Australia is currently working to reverse the impact of nutrient runoff on the Great Barrier Reef, which has been an issue for a long time [26]
Summary
One of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is to meet the global energy demand while maintaining environmental sustainability. The harvest index of modern grain crops falls within the range of 0.4 to 0.6, which is the ratio of harvestable yield to biomass ratio [9,10] On this basis, the remaining agricultural waste, except waste from cereal crops, accounts for nearly 250 million metric tons of lignocellulose biomass globally. The remaining agricultural waste, except waste from cereal crops, accounts for nearly 250 million metric tons of lignocellulose biomass globally This can be used for bioethanol production, and this can further facilitate the production of a large amount of energy needed globally. Another advantage of using crop biomass for bioethanol is the low lignin content compared to perennial trees and higher cellulose to hemicellulose ratio [11]. This study showed, despite the technical issues with some of these methods, the potential of adopting one or more of these technologies is feasible
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