Where is most bioethanol produced today and how is it made?
Bioethanol is manufactured all around the World from sugar and starch crops using long-established technologies. Brazil and North America are the World’s largest producers of bioethanol today. Brazil manufactures bioethanol predominately from sugar cane and North America manufactures bioethanol predominately from corn, a starch crop. Other crops can also be used such as wheat and sugar beet. In the case of corn, the starch is first extracted from the crop and then converted to sugars. The sugars are then fermented to an ethanol solution by enzymes. The solution is finally concentrated to hydrous ethanol (96% purity) or anhydrous ethanol (99.7% purity).
