Bioethanol & Feedstocks: A Global Perspective
Bioethanol is simply alcohol, and it’s something humans have known how to produce for thousands of years. The first known bioethanol production facility (a brewery) was built 13,000 years ago at a site in what today is Israel. Some historians believe bioethanol was consumed even earlier, by tens of thousands of years.
So we’ve been doing this for a long time, and during that time we’ve been doing it with a wide variety of feedstocks. Virtually any plant matter can be converted to alcohol, which means there are a lot of ways to get to essentially the same end product.
The basics of production
Bioethanol is produced through a process common in nature, “fermentation,” in which natural sugars are broken down into gases, solids and chemicals, including bioethanol. Over thousands of years, humans have learned how to control this process.
At its most basic, the bioethanol production process involves
Extracting sugars from a plant feedstock (usually by grinding the material, heating it and/or adding enzymes)
2. Converting the sugars to bioethanol with yeast and enzymes
3. Separating the bioethanol from other materials, which today usually involves a centrifuge
4. Removing the water through processes including distillation
Feedstocks are plentiful
In the United States, the primary feedstock for bioethanol is feed corn. In Brazil, it’s sugarcane. Preferred feedstocks are closely tied to the most prevalent crops in a particular area.
Cindy McCracken, Vice President – Grain Processing at IFF (formerly DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences) says the technology today is adaptable to the needs of biofuel producers in regions around the world.
“While corn is the predominant feedstock in the US, we also have proven products that enable bioethanol production from barley, cassava, milo, millet and wheat,” she said. “Feedstock cost and availability are keys for bioethanol production, and we aim to meet the needs of the local producers, which in turn enhances the returns for local farmers. Our applications laboratories in Brazil, the Netherlands, China, India and the US source current and future feedstocks in their regions.”
Crops that are high in starch or sugar are well suited for conversion to bioethanol and include
- Corn
- Wheat
- Barley
- Rye
- Sorghum
- Cassava
- Sugar Cane
- Sugar Beets
Market can drive growth in production, feedstocks
As the market for bioethanol as a product grows, opportunities to expand its production through current and future feedstocks grows with it.
“Bioethanol has a variety of markets that it serves ranging from transportation to potable beverages,” McCracken said. “Additional uses such as solvents, cleaning, disinfectant, household products and as a clean energy for households in developing countries shows the breadth of bioethanol versatility.”
In 2020 the world saw bioethanol producers respond quickly to the immediate and broad need for sanitizing supplies.
“As we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the bioethanol industry was able to adapt to meet the demand for many grades of bioethanol including those needed for essential hand sanitizer,” McCracken said. “This required bioethanol producers to modify plant operations as well as meet new and rapidly changing specifications. The global IFF team has the know-how and experience to help producers meet a range of specifications ranging from potable to USP grades.”
Bioethanol’s role as a low-carbon product represents an enormous opportunity for use not only today but increasingly in the future as efforts grow to fight the negative environmental and health effects of products in use today. For McCracken at IFF, that’s central to their mission.
“We see bioethanol as a critical tool in the fight against climate change,” she said. “IFF continues to strive for solutions to make bioethanol production even more efficient to drive adoption into many uses around the world.”
