00:00Under blue skies and in mild temperatures, an ancient crop is being prepared for harvest.
00:11But it's an ambition to address a modern dilemma that could see it soon put to use.
00:22The rising cost of doing business has set the wider sugar industry on a quest to diversify.
00:28We have 22 factories across Queensland and northern New South Wales and we produce about 4 to 5 million tonnes of sugar, which is our primary product and most of that is exported overseas.
00:41As an industry we're probably worth around $4 to $5 billion and we support around 20,000 regional jobs.
00:47Ash Saladini leads Australian sugar manufacturers, representing the interests of the mill operators, and believes the sector can be more prosperous.
00:56He says there's a huge opportunity to use cane not only to produce sugar, but to also manufacture biofuels.
01:06Currently we crush cane and get cane juice, so currently we convert that to sugar, however we can actually go put it through a process where it makes bioethanol and then that bioethanol is refined to make jet fuel.
01:20The gas is the pulpy residue that's left over once sugar juice is extracted from cane.
01:24To find out how to turn the sugar cane residue into fuel, we need to head to an industrial estate on the central coast of New South Wales.
01:33This is the bagasse from the Isis sugar mill in Bundaberg.
01:40And it looks just like garden mulch.
01:42It is, just like garden mulch. It can be garden mulch in fact.
01:48Andrea Poulsen is from Lysella, the tech company behind plans to establish the bio-refinery.
01:54Our process is called hydrothermal liquefaction, which sounds like a mouthful, but it's actually a combination of very simple things, water, hydro and thermal heat.
02:04So that hot, compressed water changes, it transforms the feedstock from a solid into a liquid.
02:11It's striking when the end product emerges.
02:15From the bagasse going in to getting here to the fossil replacement oil is about a 20 minute.
02:21Oh, wow. And so just like that, with maybe a little bit more refining.
02:27So yes, a little bit more refining.
02:30This fossil replacement oil goes on to make renewable fuels.
02:35And it smells so strong.
02:37Well, it smells like fossil oil, so yes.
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