Our ApproachOur business model and innovative production practices allow us to produce ethanol from non-conventional sources such as agricultural waste products and sweet sorghum. This platform mitigates any impact on local/global food prices, reduces |
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and provides a sustainable income for rural farmers. While sweet sorghum has recently received a growing interest from the bio-energy community, Anantha Energy is no stranger to its utilization in ethanol production. Anantha Energy's partners and founders have been extensively researching ethanol production from sweet sorghum in India over the past twenty years. Please download a brief copy of AE’s executive summary to find out more. |
Sweet sorghum yields between 500 to 800 gallons of ethanol per acre (4,700 to 7,500 liters per hectare). Sweet sorghum utilizes approximately one half of the water required to grow corn and one third of the water required to grow sugarcane. Ability to Grow in Marginal Soil – Sweet sorghum can grow in marginally irrigated and fertilized soils, ranging from heavy clay to light sand. Sweet sorghum has been called a "camel" among bio-fuel crops due to its adaptability, marked resistance to drought and saline-alkaline soils, and tolerance to high temperature and water-logging. Given sweet sorghum's high ethanol yield, water efficiency, and ability to grow in many climates, it has the ability to provide a stable and sustainable income to India's farmers. It can be grown in areas where farmers currently have marginal land-holdings and are subsistence farmers. Sweet sorghum provides these farmers with the opportunity to enter the global energy market by providing crops that will fuel India's energy demands. Sweet sorghum requires at most only 40 to 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre, whereas corn growers use more than 150 pounds per acre, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Less fertilizer reduces the risk of water contamination, a widespread concern in India. Sweet sorghum requires only four months to reach maturity, which allows for harvesting twice a year. In contrast, sugarcane requires 14 months to reach maturity. The energy requirement for converting sweet sorghum juice into ethanol is less than half of that required to convert corn into ethanol. This efficiency is due to the fact that the sugars in sweet sorghum juice are fermented directly. On the other hand, corn requires the additional step of saccharination to break down starch into sugars.  |