Maize could be petrol source

The Rhodesia Herald

11 February 1978

RHODESIA should be making her own fuel to power petrol and diesel engines, and could be producing a large proportion of her needs within a few years if Government backing was won for a large-scale project.

But the Government is facing problems, not only because priorities demand that available finance must be used in other directions, but because there are three different fuel production processes between which it has to choose.

Two of the processes would yield power alcohol, one of them from molasses and possibly sugar as well, and the other from maize.

The third process would yield a range of petro-chemicals from coal, a resource that Rhodesia has in vast quantities in many areas.

Choosing between these three processes has proved difficult. It is not just a matter of relative costs of production; there are also questions of scale, of what by products could be produced and of the possibility of selling these to offset one of the production costs.

There are also questions particularly looking at the processes that use sugar cane and maize.

These could be subject to drought, or widely fluctuating prices that could persuade growers to sell to other buyers or to switch in more profitable crops.

The process using maize might have the edge on the molasses process because it gives rise to cattle-feed by-product, but of the conversion of maize starch to alcohol is more involved than the conversion of sugar to alcohol, requiring an extra stage 10 produce sugar from the starch.