PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF THE PRESERVATION OF INDUSTRIALJUICES OF ENERGY CANE

Abstract

The installation of 19 biopower plants for the electricity cogeneration during the wholeyear has begun in Cuban sugar mills. As biomass fuel they will use the bagasseproduced during the sugar harvest, and to complete the rest of the year they will usemarabou and energy cane. The latter will originate juices not suitable for sugarproduction, but good as source of carbon for alcoholic fermentation. Nevertheless, notall these mills have an annexed alcohol distillery, what encouraged looking for solutionsto their preservation. To this aim, face to face interviews were carried out, the availableexperimental data on preservation of industrial juices of energy cane were used andprocessed with the DataFit 9.0.59 software to obtain mathematical prediction models forthe behavior in time of the preserved juices,with the restriction variables Brix>70%,Acidity<1,5% and UfcT/g<160 000. It was determined that the simple technologyuses the existent industrial equipment, the preservation during 180 days is feasible andcontribute with$ 9,57 CUP/t in a preliminary way to the economic feasibility. It issuggested to use this new raw material for alcohol production as soon as possible, toreduce storage costs.