Ethanol Production from Cassava Chips in Thailand

Due to the economic and energy crisis in Thailand, the National Ethanol Policy has launched the E10 (10% anhydrous ethanol substitution with benzene) plan. This plan will require a daily production of 2 million liters of ethanol. At this production scale, concern is raised regarding the tremendous amount of raw materials needed. The current production of cassava roots is about 20 million tons and around 80-90% roots are consumed by two major industries, namely starch and chip/pellet industries. It also provide root surplus for ethanol production at 2 million liters/day. A research team at Kasetsart University found out that dried chips are the most suitable raw material for ethanol production. The production cost and time can be minimized through the Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation process. These processes have been used routinely in bioethanol production of cereal grains. Cassava chips which have starch content of more than 75% at dry basis, after liquefaction by alpha-amylase are simultaneously saccharified and fermented to ethanol by using the mixture of Rhizozyme^TM (Alltech) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The complete article is available at http://safetybio.agri.kps.ku.ac.th/images/stories/pdf/cassava_chips.pdf. For more details contact Dr. Supat Attathom of the Biosafety and Biotechnology Information Center at agrspa@ku.ac.th