28-11-2012, 06:10 PM
Renewable Biomass Fuel As Green Power Alternative for Sugarcane Milling in the Philippines
3 Renewable Biomass.ppt (Size: 1.37 MB / Downloads: 86)
Energy Use in Sugarcane Mills
Approximately 5.9% of the energy used for sugar cane milling comes from bunker oil with the remainder largely coming from bagasse. The oil is primarily used by mills that have three inter-related factories: raw sugar production, a refinery and a distillery. These mills have insufficient bagasse to meet energy demands as many use low pressure boilers which have an average thermal efficiency of only about 62%. Upgrading these boilers can be a good strategy, but many mills could also consider displacing bunker oil with lower cost biomass energy heat sources for their processing energy requirements without making a large capital investment.
Conclusions
Resource efficient strategies need to be developed to wean our dependency off petroleum-based energy inputs in primary production of agricultural crops and their associated processing industries. The main findings of this study were:
Cane field residues harvested as a biofuel after the final ratoon crop cane harvest (approx. 1 year out of every 3-4 production years) was the most promising strategy to economically displace all the bunker oil used in the Philippines milling industry.