China
January 9, 2008
Source:
Chinese
Academy of Sciences
Researchers with the Lanzhou-based CAS Institute of Modern
Physics have made encouraging progress in the plantation and
industrialization of sweet sorghum. After many years of hard
work, they have come up with technical solutions to the
cultivation, storage, fermentation of the promising non-grain
candidate for energy crops.
Sweet sorghum, Sorghum bicolor (Moench) L., is a variant
with strong photosynthetic efficiency, high biological yield,
strong resistance and extensive adaptability. Its growth only
consumes one third of water needed for cultivating maize while
its stalk yield can reach as high as 150 tons per hectare. Rich
in sucrose, fructose and glucose, its juice is an ideal biomass
feedstock for alcohol fermentation and yeast cultivation. In
addition, the by-product ¡°distiller's grain,¡± generated from
fermented sweet sorghum is an ideal feed for cattle and sheep,
providing an abundant source of raw materials for the
development of animal husbandry.
In northwest China, there are sprawling sandy and salinized
wastelands suitable for its plantation because they are rich in
solar light and characterized with a huge temperature disparity
between day and night. Over the last decade, scientists with the
Lanzhou institute succeeded in improving the high-sugar and
top-quality varieties of the crop with the aid of the technology
of heavy-ion irradiation. Based on this, they cultivated a new
strain that could mature 20 days earlier than the ordinary ones.
The success leads to a satisfactory solution to the
long-standing poser caused by the early advent of hoarfrost in
northwest China.
The Lanzhou scientists also solved the technical poser of
long-time storage of the sorghum juice and succeeded in reviving
the operation of a distillery with an annual capacity up to
3,000 tons. Its trial operation resulted in a brewing success by
manufacturing end-product of alcohol up to 95% in purity through
a course of tripartite distillation during 16 hours for the
fermenting time. It is expected to promote production of the
ethanol fuel from non-grain crops.
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