SWEET SORGHUM: INTEGRATED BIOETHANOL AND BIOGAS PRODUCTION FROM A HIGH WATERUSE EFFICIENT ENERGY CROP

摘要

Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is a drought tolerant energy crop, with a high nitrogenuse efficiency, identified as a possible ethanol feedstock because of its biomass yield and high concentration offermentable free sugars. The cultivation of sweet sorghum is easy and economic, and it could be an alternative inparticular regions where conditions are not favorable for growing starch-rich crops, such as maize. Bagasse andstillage are the main by-products of the sweet sorghum processing for bioethanol production and become useful rawmaterials for further bio-production, such as lignocellulosic fuels, biogas and 2nd generation bioethanol. In its poorpost-harvest storage characteristics and in the seasonally availability, sweet sorghum found the main disadvantages.The project MULTISORGO wants to exploit the advantages of sweet sorghum as potential energy crop for bio-energy production. Thereby, the main objective of MULTISORGO is to optimize all the single steps of the bioethanolproduction chain starting from sweet sorghum biomass, focusing on the sugar preservation during the storage and theby-product energetic exploitation for different biofuels production. The final aim is to propose an EU sustainablemodel for the biofuel production in decentralised plants using a promising crop, also considering the RES directiverestrictions.