DURING 2009 the North Queensland Bio-Energy Corporation Limited (NQBE), based in the Herbert River region, developed plans to establish a $400 million sugar, ethanol and power generation facility on a 106ha site near Ingham.
Designed on similar lines to existing plants in Brazil, India and Thailand the facility will include a state-of-the-art mill capable of crushing 2.5 million tonnes of sugarcane a season; 90,000 litres to 250,000 litres/ethanol/day distillery; and a 75-80MW renewable green power generation plant.
The first expressed juice will be used for sugar production while the second expressed juice and molasses will go to the distillery.
However, the ratio of sugar to ethanol will be able to be varied to take advantage of the changes in the value of each product.
The bagasse will be used to power the high performance boiler for electricity generation to power the facility and export to the state grid.
In early 2009 NQ Bio-Energy chairman Robert Carey told the North Queensland Register his company needed a minimum of 1.7 million tonnes of cane to make the project viable but was hoping for 2.3 million tones or approximately half the cane grown in the district.
Subsequently, growers committed to supplying 2.1 million tonnes to the project.
"Currently, farmers are only paid on the sugar content of their cane and they realise cane is a valuable commodity that has been under-utilised and the NQBE facility will provide them with an opportunity to share in the additional revenue streams," Mr Carey said.
There are still a few hurdles to jump, not the least is getting access to the CSR-owned rail network to deliver cane to the facility and talks with CSR about that were under way at the time of writing.
By the end of 2009, NQBE had lodged an application with the Hinchinbrook Regional Council for a 'change of use' for the agricultural land on which it intends to build the facility and was formulating a submission to the Queensland Government for other approvals.
Mr Carey said funding was not a problem as two international and one Australian bank were backing the project.
A special projects officer had been appointed to steer the approvals through council and the State Government and he was hoping construction could start in June 2010 to enable the plant to be operational for the start of the cane harvesting season of 2012.
As economical second generation biofuels production technology is not far away where the non-food residues of agricultural crops such as stubble and cane fibre could be used to make cellulosic ethanol, NQ Bio-Energy formed a joint venture with BSES and CSIRO to breed and trial high fibre canes.
They have 18 canes with fibre content of around 20 percent (eight percent higher than current commercial varieties) which produce from 150-160 tonnes/cane/hectare compared to the 90 tonne average of the existing high sugar canes while still generating the same yield of sugar per hectare.
The object is to discover whether at a 90 percent recovery rate the 83 litres of cellulosic ethanol from each additional tonne of green cane would be profitable considering the extra cost of harvesting, as the new factory will have the ability to add-on a cellulosic ethanol plant.
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