Gov’t to commission Bio Ethanol Demonstration Plant

leslie-ramsammyGeorgetown: Government will be commissioning the Bio Ethanol Demonstration Plant on Tuesday at Albion Factory.

According to Ministry of Agriculture, Leslie Ramsammy, government vision for developing sustainable, renewable and locally available sources a Technical Cooperation with the Inter-American Development Bank was signed.

An aspect of the Technical Cooperation was the installation of a Bio-ethanol Demonstration Plant. The main objectives of this plant are: 1) Demonstrate the production of fuel grade ethanol locally. 2) Provide fuel for future demonstration of use of ethanol as a vehicle source, and 3) develop a facility for the training of local personnel in bio-fuel technologies.

The Ministry noted that the plant will utilize “blackstrap” molasses, the final output from the sugar production process to produce ethanol of a 99.9%. This ethanol can then be blended with gasoline for use in vehicles.

This plant is the first of its kind in Guyana with this grade of ethanol utilizes a two stage process: (1) Fermentation and distillation and (2) dehydration. Green Bio-refineries of Brazil and WhiteFox Technologies Ltd of Canada were contracted and sub-contracted to install the components for the respective processes.