A muscovado sugar manufacturing firm from Negros Oriental recently received a grant of P990,000 from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) so it can build a facility that will convert sugarcane bagasse and trash into electricity.

The company is the Raw Brown Sugar Milling Co. of Pamplona town. The facility, called Fluidized Bed Gasification (FBG) system, is expected to provide 40 percent of the company’s total electricity requirement, thus enabling it to cut down power cost significantly.

The FBG system, introduced by the DOST-Industrial Technology Development Institute, is used to convert biomass into new source of renewable energy by manufacturing firms. Agri wastes are “burned” when a limited amount of oxygen or air is introduced into the FBG System to produce carbon dioxide and energy. This drives a second reaction that further converts waste material to hydrogen and additional carbon dioxide – this is the gasification stage.

The sugarcane bagasse and sugarcane trash used for gasification produce synthetic gas with near-zero combustion, hence very environment friendly.

The DOST Region VII through the Negros Oriental Provincial Science and Technology Center provided the P990,000 grant. Components include among others the design, fabrication and installation, testing and debugging of the 50-kg/hr batch-type biomass carbonizer.

Raw Brown Sugar Milling Co. produces nearly 1,100 tons of pure, whole and unrefined muscovado annually. Muscovado is produced from fresh sugarcane juice without using bleaching agents. CEO of the company is Alejandro Florian Alcantara.