ETH Bioenergia advances in sugarcane research
Valor Econômico
Created to be the largest ethanol company in the country, ETH Bioenergia, controlled by the Odebrecht group, set up its own Research and Development Department. Besides improving the current processes of use of sugar cane, the company invests to develop other products that add more value to the sugarcane juice, which can be chemical, pharmaceutical and even food-related. In that line, a project, still under industrial secret, is already in progress with petrochemical Braskem, also controlled by Odebrecht. The first step was to map all the industrial opportunities of use of the sugarcane juice that have not yet been explored.
The State University of Campinas (Unicamp), also in the project, found out 120 search possibilities. After major screening, five to six projects were set aside to be studied more thoroughly. And it is precisely at such stage the project is in, says the chemical engineer Carlos Eduardo Calmanovici, Director of the Department of Innovation and Technology of ETH. Coming from the very Braskem, where he worked on the development of the plastic green of petrochemical company, Calmanovici doesn't even tell what will the end use of those "pre-selected" be. He said some criteria were evaluated to get to the five or six opportunities. Among them, those resulting in non-toxic products and those of equally clean routes. And also that they could preferably replace currently imported items and that obviously had a promising market.
With those "candidates" at hand, Braskem and ETH now deepen in the economic feasibility studies - investment and return - to hit the hammer. Not all of the list will be run in partnership with the petrochemical company. "Braskem has its interests, as well as ETH. Where they converge, there will be a partnership", he says. Some of the mapped projects can be also developed in partnership with other companies that have similar interests, says Calmanovici. There are other researches already underway to make progress in the current industrial and agricultural processes. Among them, that on yeasts (substances that lead to fermentation).
Also in partnership with the Unicamp, and in cooperation with other research institutions, the project consists on the manipulation of genes of yeasts to intensify positive characteristics such as resistance, and isolate those that adversely affect fermentation. With that, the company expects to have more stability in the operation of its plants - that have different soil and climate conditions - as well as more control of the industrial process. "At the end, we will have, at least, gains from 0.5% to 1% in the fermentation efficiency", says Calmanovici, also President of the Anpei (National Association of Research and Development of the Innovative Companies). The project, which began nearly six months ago, already has two patents registered by Unicamp and ETH.
There is still no budget set for the Department of Innovation, but the forecast is that it absorbs, as of 2012, between 0.5% and 1% of the earnings of the company - planned to get to R$ 4 billion (US$ 2.35 billion). When that happens, ETH will be operating nine crushing plants for 40 million tons of cane - in that harvest (2011/12) nearly 20 million tons should be processed.