How is sugar cane made into fuel?

Answer 1

Two ways:

1. Fermentation and distilling.
2. Burning as biomass.

Fermenting and distilling: The raw sugar cane is washed, chopped and shredded and passed through a mill to extract the juice. The juice is filtered and boiled. The juice is partially evaporated down to a syrup. Sugar is precipitated out of the syrup by crystallization. The crystalline sugar is refined into various sugar products. The remaining syrup is molasses. The molasses is mixed with yeast, which begins fermentation. During fermentation, the yeast consumes sugar and produces carbon dioxide and ethanol. At the end of fermentation the liquid contains 7 to 10 percent ethanol, by volume. The yeast is removed in a centrifuge. The liquid is then distilled to extract the ethanol. At this point, the ethanol may contain as much as 5% water. It is suitable for use as fuel in ethanol-only and flex-fuel vehicles, but the water content must be reduced further if it is going to be mixed with gasoline.

Burning as biomass: The waste vegetation (bagasse) is burnt to heat water into steam. The steam propels a turbine that generates electricity.

Both these methods produce energy that is renewable and does not contribute to global warming and climate change. This is why biofuel is so important.