Orlando Volpato, Delphi - AEA – Associação Brasileira de ...

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Fig. 3: Petrol price projections scenarios
The analysis above shows that, despite the apparent self-sufficiency in petrol, it is
very important to substitute renewable fuels for diesel fuel in order to pursue a more
favorable trade balance.
In the following paragraph, some sugar and alcohol agricultural sector data will be
presented along with benefits of using ethanol to substitute part of the diesel used in
sugar-cane agricultural operations.
1.1 Sugar and alcohol agricultural sector data (2008/2009 harvest)
Compiling sugar-cane agricultural data, available from many groups like: Idea,
Cepea/Esalq, UNICA, CONABE and others, we can make the summary for the
2008/2009 harvest. See additional sources [30], [31], [32] and [33].
About 569 million tons of sugar-cane was processed by about 420 sugar and/or
ethanol mills [29][34]. See figure 4 below. There are about 35 new mills currently in
construction.
On the average, each ton of sugar cane produces about 84 liters of anhydrous
ethanol (AEAC, used to make gasoline C from its mixture with gasoline A).
On the average, each ton of sugar cane produces about 90 liters of hydrous ethanol,
which is sold at fuel as E100. There is an excess electricity of about 12 KWh per ton
of sugar cane.
Diesel fuel is used at an average rate of 2.03 liters for each processed ton of sugar
cane, amounting to approximately 1.16 billion liters of diesel per harvest.
From that amount of fuel, about 60% is used for road transportation and 40% is used
by tractors, harvester and other off-road equipments used in the farms and mills.