International Journal of Engineering, Applied and Management Sciences Paradigms (IJEAM)

Eco-Efficiency Assessment of Ethanol

Production In Ethiopia
Elias W. Gabisa1, Shabbir H. Gheewala2
1
The Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment,
King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, 126 Pracha uthit Road, Centre for Energy Technology and
Environment, PERDO, Bangkok, Thailand, Faculty of Chemicaland Food Engineering, Bahir Dar Institute of
Technology, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar,Ethiopia
2
The Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment,
King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, 126 Pracha uthit Road,
Centre for Energy Technology and Environment, PERDO, Bangkok 10140, Thailand

Abstract- The sustainability of ethanol production in Ethiopia is assessed using ‘eco-efficiency’ indicator, which is a
combined economic and environmental sustainability indicator. The Gross value added (US$) and the life cycle
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (kgCO2eq) are selected as the indicators for characterizing economic and environmental
performance, respectively. The results revealed that the alternative of mechanized farming along with cane trash
utilization for power generation and bioslurry as a fertilizer had the highest eco-efficiency. This is because of using the
byproducts and avoiding cane trash burning which decreases the GHG emissions while increasing the value addition.
Shifting to mechanized harvesting and using cane trash as energy source has revealed an increase in eco-efficiency of
more than 40%. Improving sugarcane biomass utilization across the entire sugarcane system would enhance the
sustainability of the ethanol production system.
Key words: Ethanol; Eco-efficiency; Ethiopia; GHG emissions; GVA

I. INTRODUCTION
Biomass energy utilization is becoming a key energy strategy of many countries because of the issue of energy
security and climate change [1]. The case is beyond climate change and energy security for developing countries
like Ethiopia since more of the economy is dependent on agriculture, it promotes the agricultural sector
development. Having a potential of bioenergy, 750 PJ per annum from different biomass resources, the sector
contribution to the economy is still low [2]. Ethanol production from sugarcane molasses is getting high recognition
throughout the world as it is produced from the byproduct of sugar processing. When we look at the complete
picture of the ethanol sector, it comes with much diversified products like bagasse, cane trash, filter cake, and
molasses [3–6]. These have a variety of advantages if appropriately utilized for different purposes like energy
generation from cane trash and vinasse, and using vinasse as fertilizer in the cane field. Therefore, technologies are
being developed for effective and efficient utilization of the byproducts from the sugarcane sector. For example,
biogas production from wastewater vinasse is being used in city buses in Brazil [7]. The cane trash can also be used
for electricity generation in cogeneration power plant [8].
Sugar production started in Ethiopia around the 1950s by cultivating 35,000 ha and 12,500 tonne per day collective
crushing capacity of four factories. Nowadays the sugar production has been boosted to 400,000 tonnes and the
cultivation area is expanded to 65,000 ha. The ethanol production has also been increased from 7,000 m3 to 20,000
m3 per day [9]. Despite these improvements,the situation is still not satisfactory when compared with other
countries like India, Thailand, and Brazil. Even though the ethanol sector in Ethiopia has been gradually developing,
there are yet no studies conducted on environmental as well as socio-economic sustainability of the sector.
Therefore, this paper aims to assess the sustainability of ethanol production in Ethiopia considering of combined
environmental and economic sustainability indicator called ‘Eco-efficiency’.

II. METHODOLOGY
2.1 Eco-efficiency
The eco-efficiency concept was developed in 1992 by the World Bank. Since it brings together the very important
ingredients of environment and economy, it has been widely recognized by the business sector [10]. Eco-efficiency
has been recently used to evaluate the sustainability of different products such as: Molasses ethanol [11], farm scale
biogas [12] and biodiesel from Jatropha curcas fruit [13]. Eco-efficiency is generally represented as Equation 1
below:
Product or Service Value
(1)
Environmental Influence

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 International Journal of Engineering, Applied and Management Sciences Paradigms (IJEAM)

There are different indicators suggested by developers and used by the researchers, like gross value added
(economic) and, energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission (environmental). In this particular paper,
gross value added is considered as an indicator of the product value and life cycle GHG emissions as an
environmental indicator.
So, the eco-efficiency is re-stated asin Equation 2 below:
Gross Value Added GVA
Eco − efficiency = (2)
GHG emissions
Gross Value added
Gross value added (GVA) is the difference between market price and production cost of the product as in Equation
3.
Gross Value addedproduct = Selling Priceproduct − Production Cost product (3)
The final products obtained along the life cycle of ethanol production in Ethiopia are sugar, hydrous and anhydrous
ethanol [Table 1]. For a fair comparison of the different alternative scenarios, the GVA and GHG emissions are
considered based on the same reference flow i.e. per tonne of sugarcane processed.

Table 1: Market prices of final products

Products Market Price Production cost
Sugar 16 5.75
Molasses Ethanol Hydrous 14.59 4.15
Anhydrous 9.37 5.29

a The unit for market and production cost of sugar is ETB/ kg and it is ETB/L for molasses (1 USD = 28.3 ETB)
Different alternative scenarios have been considered in this study [Table 2]. The alternatives are developed based on
the byproduct (cane trash and vinasse) utilization within or out of the production value chain and changing the
agricultural practice in the sugarcane farming i.e. from manual harvesting to mechanical harvesting.

Table 2: Definition of different alternative scenarios

Scenarios Description
Base case Conventional sugarcane farming + sugar processing + ethanol processing
Alternative 1 Base case + bioslurry utilization + biogas electricity
Alternative 2 Alternative 1 + mechanical harvesting + electricity from cane trash burning

2.2 Life cycle GHG emissions

Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to calculate the GHG emissionsfrom ethanol production in
Ethiopia. This ISO-standardized methodology has become mainstream in environmental impact assessments of
supply chains [14,15]. It has already been applied by various researchers to assess the impacts of ethanol production
in several countries, e.g. in Nepal and Indonesia [16], in Thailand[17], in China [18] and in Brazil [19]. The LCA
software SimaProV8 was used to build up the process trees and compile the results based on the ReCiPe 2016
midpoint Hierarchist method for the impact characterization. The emission factors for this case study were taken
from scholarly published papers and a well-known database, GREET 1.7 [20]. The US Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) emission factors were also used for emissions related to fertilizer application and production [21].
The applied fertilizer was N-fertilizer in a ratio of 46:0:0 (N: P: K) and NPS in the ratio of 6:20:10 (N: P: S).
The other source of emission is cane trash burning. Even though it is not recommended, the practice of cane trash
burning is being used as the only way of trash removal in sugarcane farming in Ethiopia. The method for
determination of non-CO2 emissions from sugarcane burning is adopted from Nguyen et al. 2007 [6]. Since cane
trash is biomass and hence considered carbon neutral, CO2 emission from burning of the cane trashis not accounted
for in the GHG emission calculations.

III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Life cycle GHG emissions of the different alternative scenarios
The GHG emissions obtained are 54.4, 55.67, and 35.27 kgCO2eq per GJ of ethanol produced for base case,
Alternative 1 and Alternative 2 respectively. In the case of the base case and Alternative 1, 75% of the GHG
emission is contributed from the sugarcane burning while it accounts for 58 % in the case of Alternative 2. The
results revealed that the improvement of sugarcane farming practice (changing from manual to mechanical) and
integrated utilization of cane trash and vinasse brings about a reduction in GHG emissions of the final products i.e.
molasses ethanol and the sugar. This implies that proper utilization of the different byproducts for different purposes

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 International Journal of Engineering, Applied and Management Sciences Paradigms (IJEAM)

can help improve the GHG emission performance of molasses ethanol production. Mechanized farming combined
with cane trash utilization for electricity generation shows the highest GHG emissions reduction, which is the case
of Alternative 2 [Figure 1]. Using bioslurry from the biogas plant from ethanol wastewater did not show much
improvement in GHG emission. However, the application of the bioslurry provided extra benefit of moisturizing the
soil so that the quality of the soil also improved. The other contributor to GHG emission is the consumption of lime
and phosphoric acid during molasses generation in base case and Alternative 1. In the case of Alternative 2, the
contribution from agriculturedecreases by50 %. The contribution from ethanol processing, estimated 9%, comes
from consumption of urea in the fermentation process.

10
GHG emission (kgCO2eq/t cane)

0
Agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture
Ethanol processing

Ethanol processing

Ethanol processing
Molasses generation

Molasses generation

Molasses generation
Total GHG emissions

Total GHG emissions

Total GHG emissions

Base Alternative 1 Alternative 2

Figure 1: Life cycle GHG emission contribution of different life cycle stages of ethanol production in Ethiopia

60

50
GHG emission (kgCO2eq/GJ)

40

30

20

10

0
processing

processing

processing
generation
generation

generation
Agricultur

Total GHG

Agricultur

Total GHG

Agricultur

Total GHG
Molasses
Molasses

Molasses
emissions

emissions

emissions
Ethanol

Ethanol

Ethanol
e

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 International Journal of Engineering, Applied and Management Sciences Paradigms (IJEAM)

3.2 Gross value added

The gross value added of the products are calculated using Equation 3 and the data provided in Table 1. For the base
case scenario, the production cost of the products and selling prices along the value chain are applied. Alternative 1
assumes there is negligible additional value added from the fertilizer (bioslurry from biogas production) as there is
no market for that. For the Alternative 2, the cost of fuel consumed in mechanical harvester and cane trash
transportation to the factory is assumed more or less similar with the labor payment for manual harvesting per tonne
of cane. This is in line with studies from Sudan and India.For example, in the case of Sudan’s sugarcane farming
practice, the cost of manual harvesting is 0.19 US$ while for mechanical harvesting is 0.1US$ per tonne of cane
[22]. Similarly, in India the cost of manual harvesting is higher than mechanical harvesting by 44%, which shows a
similar implication with previous study in Sudan [23].Cane trash transportation fuel consumption cost (0.1US$ per
tonne of cane) is taken in to consideration to calculate the cost of cane trash transportation to the factory. Therefore,
the cost of mechanical harvesting (0.1 US$ per tonne of cane) plus the cost of cane trash transportation is summed
up to 0.2US$ per tonne of cane (~0.19US$ per tonne of cane), which is cost for manual harvesting. To determine the
value addition from cane trash recovery for electricity generation, the current selling price of electricity of 0.06
$USD is considered. The production cost of the electricity is collected from factory data for bagasse electricity,
which is 0.015US$. Considering the above assumptions the overall value addition from mechanical harvesting and
cane trash recovery is estimated to be 0.4US$ per tonne of cane [Table 3].
Eco-efficiency analysis
The eco-efficiency of the three products (Sugar, Hydrous Ethanol and Anhydrous Ethanol) is determined
considering the market values of the product in the current market per cubic metre of ethanol produced [Table 3].
Even though prices of products are generally highly volatile, in Ethiopia since all those products are produced from
the government company, their price were fixed for the last three years.

Table 3: Eco-efficiency of bio-refinery system in Ethiopia

Alternatives Total GHG emission Gross value Added Eco-Efficiency
(kgCO2eq/t cane) (US$/t cane) (US$/ kgCO2eq)
Base 8.90 44.6 5.01
Alternative 1 9.07 44.6 4.92
Alternative 2 5.7 45 7.9

Note: Conversion rate of 28.3 ETB = 1USD is considered

The eco-efficiency analysis shows that using vinasse as a fertilizer and cane trash for excess electricity, which will
contribute in a reduction of GHG emissions greatly is more favorable than that of the other systems [Figure 2].
5
Eco-efficiency of products

4.5
4
(US$/kgCO2eq

3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Base Alt1 Alt2 Base Alt 1 Alt 2 Base Alt 1 Alt 2

Sugar Hydrous Ethanol Anhydrous Ethanol

Figure 2: Eco-efficiency of different ethanol production alternatives

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 International Journal of Engineering, Applied and Management Sciences Paradigms (IJEAM)

3.5

2.5

1.5

0.5

0
Base Alt 1 Alt 2 Base Alt 1 Alt 2 Base Alt 1 Alt 2

Hydrous Ethanol Anhydrous Ethanol Sugar

Eco-efficiency Eco-efficiency

IV. CONCLUSION
From the study, it is concluded that utilizing the byproducts as much as possible with in the ethanol-processing
framework significantly increases the eco-efficiency of the products. Utilizing all the cane trash for energy
production and changing the harvesting mechanism from manual (which includes trash pre-harvest burning) to
mechanical shows above 40% more eco-efficiency than the other alternatives. The eco-efficiency indicator is more
sensible than other non-combined indicators to show the sustainability of the ethanol and other products. The gross
value addition from shifting to Alternative 2 to the base case scenario is not much significant. This is because the
cost incurred for fuel consumption in mechanical harvesting and sugarcane trash transportation is almost equal with
the cost of manual harvesting (only 5% difference). The advantage of electricity from the cane trash has some value
addition to the ethanol production; still the estimated production cost in the factory is not established. Therefore, the
production cost of bagasse electricity is assumed in this calculation. The increased value of eco-efficiency indicator
of Alternative 2 relative to the base case can imply a better sustainability because the net value added was increased
as well as the net GHG emissions were decreased

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