Asahi yields 5 times more bioethanol from sugarcane

Asahi Breweries Ltd. and a government-affiliated research institute in Japan said that they have jointly developed a method to produce more than five times as much bioethanol from a new variety of sugarcane compared with conventional methods. The method enables mass production of bioethanol at low costs while maintaining sugar yields on a par with current levels, according to the major Japanese brewer and the National Agricultural Research Center for Kyushu Okinawa Region, or KONARC, of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, an independent administrative agency. The new sugarcane, developed by KONARC and dubbed KY01-2044, can yield 1.3 times as much sugar and 1.8 times as much fuel-usable fiber as conventional sugarcane can. The ethanol generation process, which involves the use of an Asahi-developed ethanol extraction method, emits about 57 times less carbon dioxide than conventional production processes. (April 13, 2010)