Brazil is not losing the train of cellulosic ethanol

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil visited last week a plant near São Paul which is testing a new method to obtain ethanol from sugarcane pomace bagasse (what's left after sugar is extracted). Petrobras, the company that is financing this research hopes to obtain 40 percent more ethanol without harvesting more sugarcane.

Plans are to have a full-working plant in 2011 that is able to process 10 tons of pomace and produce 2,800 liters of ethanol from it per day. Although theoretically the process can use any kind of agricultural waste, the plant is being tuned up to use sugarcane pomace, because there's currently more of that than anything else.

Both Petrobras and the Government of Brazil consider this plant the country's first step towards second generation biofuels.

Related:

• Nebraska opens cellulosic ethanol plant
• Royal Nedalco will open a cellullosic ethanol plant using yeast, not bacteria
• Don't use food to make ethanol, use garbage

[Source: Econoticias]

[Edited: Thanks to Chris for the correction on the correct term for bagasse]