Brazilian Products

03/06/2009
In spite of still to be in experimental phase in Brazil, the obtaining of ethanol from the cassava is a reality more and more close. The high energy value of that original Amazonian root will be, soon, also taken advantage for the biofuels production.   
 
“All of the cassava kinds can be used for the biofuels production, but those that possess larger concentration of starch, as the industrial cassava, are the most suitable”, explains the director of the Center of Roots and Tropical Starches (Cerat), Claudio Cabello.  

Since 2003, Claúdio Cabello develops lines of researches about the ethanol production from starches. “Yam and sweet potato have good possibilities, but they are not compared to the that is possible to make from from the cassava. It possesses extremely positive differentials, as the cultivation possibility in different areas of the country”, he said. 
 
Cabelo told that the root has innumerable means to be transformed in ethanol. “There are not in the cassava any substance that inhibits the biological process of alcoholic fermentation and, depending on the area, the obtaining of alcohol from it one can be cheaper than for the cane", he explains. "But, it will depend on incentives that result in increase of the productivity”, he completes. 
 
Claudio Cabello explains that the cassava production has a cost of R$ 100 for hectare. “Each hectare produces among 28 and 30 tons, and the market pays R$ 140 per ton. That does with that to markup of that product is excellent, giving larger freedom besides for the definition of the time of the crop”, he argues. 
 
As to the vice-president of the Brazilian Association of the Producing of Starch of Cassava (Abam), Antonio Donizetti Fadel, the time of cultivation of the cassava varies among nine and 30 months. 
 
“The more time in the earth, more is the profitability. Brazil is the only country of the world to pick in the 24th month. With 12 months, the productivity is, on average, of 25 tons per hectare. If the period be enlarged for between 18 and 24 months, that productivity go up for 40 tons. And the cost doesn't increase so much, because there is no need of replants or to preparing the round again”, explains Fadel. 
 
According to him, the country needs, to improve the productivity per hectare to turn more attractive the use of thid plant in the biofuel production, and the investment more viable economically. “It is necessary that the State, at the proalcohol example, help us to improve the agricultural productivity to turn more competitive the ethanol production in relation to the sugar cane and other raw materials for biocofuels. The cassava has conditions of being quite competitive, since that have investmentment in this agricultural sector.” 
 
With the current technology, each ton of cassava can produce 200 liters of alcohol. "I don't have doubts of the lucrative potential of this plant, once it can be produced in any soil type and it doesn't interfere so much in the environment”, he completes. 
 
Another positive point for the biofuel production from cassava is that the history of this root is the same with the own history of the population of the Amazonian. "That helps to do that the rejection of the use for the ethanol production to be very smaller to the environmentalists. The possibility to plant it jointly to other cultures it also facilitates that acceptance”, explains the agriculture-forest technician of the General office of Agriculture-forest Development of Acre State, Diones Assis Salla. (ABr)

03/23/2010
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