A University professor of biological sciences is working with a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to produce clean alternative fuel using sugarcane.Ethanol, the same alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can also be used as an alternative fuel source, Raj Boopathy, professor of biological sciences, said.

When sugarcane is harvested, only the stalk of the sugarcane is needed, and the leaf is burned as waste in the fields.

“What we are trying to do is use that sugarcane leaf as a resource, and we can make ethanol from the leaf,” Boopathy said.

Once the leaves are collected, a complex chemical called lignin is removed, leaving cellulose and hemicellulose. These complex compounds are then broken down using enzymes to make glucose, the starting material for fermentation to make ethanol.

The gasoline used in standard vehicles contains 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline. Flexifuel vehicle models, models that use ethanol fuel, use 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

Ethanol is predominately produced from corn, but Boopathy said he wants to change that through his research.

“Corn is a main food crop,” he said, “so they are diverting the corn to make ethanol, and that’s why the corn price is going up. So what we are suggesting is do not use the food crop. Use the residue. Use the waste product to make ethanol.”

Boopathy is also making ethanol from bagasse, the fibrous residue left after the sugarcane stalk is crushed and its juices are extracted.

“If we can prove that we can make it from these two sources, it can be made from any agriculture crop,” Boopathy said. “It is not specific to sugarcane.”

So far, Boopathy’s research has been successful. “We have already made ethanol in a small scale in a one liter fermenter, so now we are planning to scale up into five liter and 20 liter.”

However, cost is a problem.

“So far we have been successful in the lab scale, but when we work out the cost, it is not competitive, coming to $8 a gallon,” Boopathy said.

Only two companies in the world make the enzyme needed in the process, making the enzyme expensive. If the enzyme costs go down, Boopathy said the fuel would be competitive. His goal is to bring costs down to about $2 to $3 per gallon at the pump.