Guyana gets first ethanol demonstration plant

In Guyana, the country’s first ever bioethanol demonstration plant was commissioned last week at what was regarded the start of an agro fuel revolution in a country that is leaning aggressively towards a renewable energy pathway. The plant located at the Albion Estate on the Corentyne Coast in Region Six, will produce ethanol to a quantity of 1000 liters per day from “blackstrap” molasses, the final output from the sugar production process.

Being a demonstration plant, the agro fuel will serve commercial purposes, but will be applied to the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s (GuySuCo) laboratory and industrial practices and to fuel a small number of vehicles owned by the sugar company and the Ministry of Agriculture. Some of it will be amalgamated with a small quantity of gasoline to create an E-10 formula which the Office of the Prime Minister will use as a model in the formulation of a transport fuel policy.