Resumen

CHUCK-HERNANDEZ, C.; PEREZ-CARRILLO, E.; HEREDIA-OLEA, E.  y  SERNA-SALDIVAR, S.O.. Sorghum as a multifunctional crop for bioethanol production in Mexico: Tecnologies, advances and improvement opportunities. Rev. Mex. Ing. Quím [online]. 2011, vol.10, n.3, pp.529-549. ISSN 1665-2738.

By year 2012, Mexico plans to substitute 880 million liters of gasoline oxygenase with ethanol. This represente the bioconversion of 2.2 or 16 million tons of maize and sugar cane (10 or 33% of the national production). maize and sugarcane are the most common crops utilized to produce ethanol worldwide. The use of maize in Mexico is not feasible due to social and legal restrictions whereas the high price of domestic sugar cane also limits its use. Instead, sorghum is a good option because is a drought resistant crop that yields under adverse agronomic conditions on rain fed areas. The main advantage of sorghum is that is a multifaceted crop because it has commercial grain, sweet and high biomass genotypes that can be efficiently bioconverted into ethanol. The conversion of the starchy sorghum grain with similar technologies employed for maize allows the production of 360 to 400 L/ton. Procetsing sweet sorghums into sweet juice and spent bagasse or ligno-cellulose have the potential to yield 8,000 L bioethanol/Ha. The new high biomass varieties can be transformed into bioethanol with ligno-cellulose technologies. These have the potential to yield up to 14,800 L/Ha. However, the sorghum crop still has to overcome technological challenges such as milling equipment, crop genetic engineering or modification, development of new fermenting microorganisms and pretreatment methods for grain and bagasse. This review describes viable technologies of transformation of grain, sweet and high biomass sorghums into ethanol especially considering the Mexican context.

Palabras llave : bagasse; bioethanol; lignocellulosic material; grain and sweet sorghum.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )