Today we went to an ethanol plant. It had a terrible sickly sweet smell, and was very loud. I could hardly hear Erica explain the ethanol making process, so luckily I was familiar with it. The machines were a lot larger than I thought they'd be. Trucks were constantly rolling up with 3 huge cargo holds of sugar cane behind them! This particular plant made about 50% edible sugar and 50% ethanol. First the sugar cane was washed and then processed with cutters 5 times. Then it was heated up in a syrupy vat. This syrup is either processed to sugar or processed to ethanol. There were technicians everywhere making sure the process went smoothly as the plant was so large! The scientists would test the purity of the sugar and the ethanol, and the sugar would be further processed in India. It didn't get refined here.
There were a lot of emissions coming out of the ethanol plant, and when we asked what specific gases were released, the engineers weren't sure. They said carbon dioxide, but it looked like there were other gases too.
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