The Romero Group’s Caña Brava Company, based in Peru’s northwestern city of Piura, has been functioning at full steam for a week, and is now producing 350,000 liters of ethanol daily, El Comercio reports.
We are using state-of-the-art technology to irrigate 7,000 hectares of sugar cane, Caña Brava’s General Manager Ángel Irazola told the newspaper.
Ethanol, which made by fermenting and then distilling starch or sugar crops such as sugar cane, maize, sorghum, wheat and other grains, or even cornstalks, fruit and vegetable waste, is used as motor fuel and as a fuel additive. Added to gasoline, ethanol reduces volatile organic compound and hydrocarbon emissions, carcinogenic benzene and butadiene emissions, and particulate matter emissions from gasoline combustion.
Sugar cane-based ethanol, according to Irazola, produces eight times more energy than corn-based ethanol.
Caña Brava – which will set aside a third of its production for export and expects to produce 70 million liters of the precious liquid by 2010 – produces its own electricity with sugar cane pulp, or mash.
The sugar cane pulp is used to produce alcohol, which is then mixed with gasoline to generate electricity.
