Economic and legal aspects of the direct processing of sugar beet to ethanol

Sugar beet is a key resource in a future chemical platform of a sugar biorefinery. Decontrol of production amounts of sugar in the European Union in 2017 necessitates the search for other profitable production alternatives in the sugar industry. One possible approach is based on the direct processing of beetroot to bioethanol. This paper discusses research which has described and compared process flows (PFD) as well as incomes and financial expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX) of two technological variants that involve the direct processing of sugar beet to ethanol: one with the use of Betaprocess (R) technology, and the other serving as a reference technology. The Betaprocess (R) technology is an original pretreatment method whereby plant cells are degraded efficiently, owing to which the feedstock is fed directly to digesters, where it is fermented effectively. The research results show that the whole processing cycle is improved by inclusion of Betaprocess (R), with such gains as lower investment and operational costs of the installation in comparison to the reference technology. This paper also contains an analysis of the direct processing of sugar beet to ethanol in view of the binding law, including the legal regulations on liquid biofuels and biocomponents.