Replacing Oil

The rice waste problem in China

China is the worlds largest producer of rice and as a result has about 230 million tonnes of rice waste to dispose of each year. The huge amount of straw burnt each year is actually a significant contributor to China’s pollution problem. Most farmers burn the straw after harvest releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air.

The problem with creating biofuels from rice waste

Rice straw’s complex cellulose structure and lignin components make it difficult for microorganisms to break down into biofuel. Until now, researchers have been soaking the straw in an alkali solution to begin the breaking down process for the fermentation microbes.

Although soaking the straw in recycled chemicals and heating it works, it’s not a practical sollution for any large scale biofuel production. The process is simply too expensive and dirty.

Why burn it if you can make fuel from it?

A rice waste to biofuel solution?

Li Xiujin, environmental engineering professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and his team of scientists have found a cleaner way of kick starting the degradation process. Instead of soaking the leftover rice straw they’ve treated it with small amounts of an alkaline solution containing sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The treatment has resulted in a 64.5% improvement in methane yield, but no mention yet of ethanol production.

Will rice waste be a real biofuel solution in the near future?

Biofuels like methane could be used in farm equipment used to plant and harvest rice , but not without a cost to individual farmers. Government subsidies to farmers for fitting their farm equipment to use compressed biogas, produced from their own rice waste, would be a huge step in solving both rising fuel/food prices and air pollution. However, building pipelines and pumping stations for delivering biogas to the average consumer just isn’t going to happen.

Ethanol from rice waste presents a much more promising future for China’s, and the worlds, renewable fuel production. The infrastructure is already in place and we’ve already seen how effective it is at lowering existing fossil fuel demand and in turn prices. A practical cellulosic ethanol from rice waste program in China would help alleviate much of the world’s skyrocketing fuel price woes.

Tags: cellulosic ethanol, China, rice waste

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