China kicked off on Saturday the construction of its largest
project to produce alcohol fuel from grains in Jilin City of
northeastern Jilin Province.
Costing 2.89 billion yuan (US$348 million), the project is expected
to consume 1.92 million tons of corn to produce 600,000 tons of
alcohol fuel annually upon its final completion in 2003.
The project, a pilot program in developing new energy resources, is
of strategic significance for China to adjust its energy resources
structure and develop new resources to replace petroleum, said Guo
Yinglan, a professor with the Dongbei (northeast
China) Normal University, who has been engaged in research on
automobile fuel for more than 20 years.
China has tried to expand use of new energy resources to substitute
traditional ones in recent years for both economic and
environmental purposes.
The Jilin project will consist of nine production facilities
including an alcohol production line, a refined corn oil production
workshop and an enzyme workshop. It is jointly funded by the China
National Petroleum Corporation, Jilin Grain (Group) Co. Ltd. and
the China Resources (Holdings) Company Ltd.
Apart from alcohol fuel, the project can also produce a series of
downstream products such as 45,000 tons of corn oil, 175,000 cubic
meters of hollow bricks and 183,000 tons of materials for road
building.
Grain alcohol can be used as a kind of new automobile fuel by
mixing it with gasoline. This kind of mixture can help reduce air
pollution remarkably and has been widely used in some American and
European countries for nearly 20 years.
The development of alcohol fuel is a new industry in China and so
far, only a few provinces, including Heilongjiang and Jilin, have
been chosen by the State to carry out pilot production.
Heilongjiang Province, in northeast China, produced 220,000 tons of
grain alcohol last year, a portion of which was exported to Japan,
the Republic of Korea and other countries.
Professor Guo Yinglan said that alcohol fuel will play a key role
in improving the environment quality since gasoline mixed with
grain alcohol can be fully burnt and it does not produce substances
harmful to the human body.
Moreover, using grain alcohol can save energy resources and consume
extra grain, said Guo.
Jilin Province is one of the major commodity grain producers in
China, with its corn output standing at 15.36 million tons
annually, ranking first in the country for years.
Experts said that the Jilin alcohol fuel project only consumes
one-eighth of the province's annual corn output and will not affect
the grain supply.
(Xinhua News Agency
09/23/2001)