Latest update June 4th, 2026 12:30 AM
Sweetening sugar
In the Friday edition of our newspaper, we reported on a press conference hosted by DDL, in which it was announced that a new bottling plant would be launched early next year.
It was also mentioned that the company would be commissioning a “bio-methanisation” or “bio-gas” plant that would utilise the spent “wash”, which is a waste product in the production of alcohol from molasses, to produce compressed natural gas (CNG) or methane. This CNG would go a long way in reducing the energy costs of the corporation, especially in the coming era of expensive fossil fuel costs.
This is a very significant initiative and deserves greater prominence in the news, since its emulation could reduce our fuel costs in the country as a whole, and in the sugar industry in particular. Europe has taken a lead in developing the technology and deployment of CNG; and in some projections, they believe that by 2020 they may be in a position to replace all CNG imports from Russia. What has already occurred in the EU is a 13.6% increased growth in biogas use for primary energy production, between 2005 and 2006.
While Europe may be focusing on dedicated energy crops, the production of sugar, or ethanol from sugar cane, presents great opportunities for producing CNG from the waste products that are usually discarded.
The sugar industry has been using the “bagasse,” or sugar cane fibre, after the juice has been squeezed out to produce steam and electricity for over a hundred years. But only in the era of diminishing fossil fuels and concomitant rising costs have we begun to realise the potential of using that bagasse to “electrify” more than just the sugar factories and the senior staff compounds.
The new Skeldon Sugar Factory incorporates a co-generation plant that is supposed to sell at least ten megawatts of electricity annually to the national grid. Combined with the carbon credits that would be earned by using the “green” energy, the revenue should go a long way in reducing the cost of production of sugar, and helping to make the industry viable.
The example of DDL suggests a further avenue for utilising waste products to generate revenue in the production of sugar. In addition to the spent wash that DDL will utilise, sugar production generates “press mud” that is even richer in methane. In the last year, several Indian sugar mills have plunged heavily into the production of CNG, with the assistance of European firms from both the technical and financial ends. Only last week, one energy company, ISPAT, announced a major project to extract CNG from the press mud generated by twenty sugar mills located in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
Ispat Energy signed a BOOT (build-own-operate-transfer) agreement with the sugar mills to set up the 11,000 cubic metres a day bio-CNG plant, which will be online by October 2009. The plant is expected to utilise 110 tonnes of press mud and 100 tonnes of wet and dry organic manure a day to produce the gas.
The complete project can generate 16,000 to 30,000 carbon credits a year. CantorCO2e, which is the leading provider of financial services to the global environmental and energy markets, would be developing the clean development mechanism documentation which is required for selling the carbon credits for 10 years.
While we do not have the manure resources that India possesses, our press mud component has been allowed to be either dumped or, at best, spread on some fields. Booker Tate, which was contracted to run our sugar operations since the beginning of the nineties, neglected to explore such methodologies as the production of CNG to lower cost of production, but rather focused on simply boosting production, for which they received fat bonuses. So what if the cost of production skyrocketed? And even in this limited area, they have failed.
We are suggesting that in addition to the review that the hands-on Minister of Agriculture has instituted to discern why production in the sugar industry has plummeted, he initiates an exploration of the possibilities for the production of CNG. Even if the quantities are not mammoth in the beginning, Guysuco’s fleet of vehicles – which is slated to increase exponentially with the focus on mechanisation – could be adapted to use the fuel, and thus bring great savings to the corporation.
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