EVALUATION OF THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE RAW SUGAR PRODUCTION USING EMERGY ANALYSIS

Abstract

The sustainability of the production process of raw sugar from sugar cane in the UEB Fábrica de Azúcar "14 de Julio" is evaluated in present work. To accomplish this the Emergy Methodology developed by the American ecologist Howard T. Odum was used. It was determined that 51.44 % of the emergy of the process comes from the economy and 48.56 % from natural resources. The Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI) calculated was 1.12 which indicates that the process is not sustainable long range however it contributes moderately to the economy. The assessment allowed to know the main factory products transformities which are: 1.2328 E+08 seJ/J for the raw sugar and 1.2391 E+07 seJ/J for the electricity. Also, it was determined the specific emergy of other important co-products which are: 9.5501 E+09 seJ/g for the bagasse, 1.5957 E+10 seJ/g for the molasses and 1.7756 E+10 seJ/g for the filter cake which is meaningful for the subsequent studies in the industry of derivatives. These results indicate that the system should be reorganized to improve its efficiency and allow a better resourcesexploitation. That’s why possible alternatives which may contribute to a better performance of the system were identified.