Improving bioethanol production by increasing sugar beet crop yield

This review presents a summary of published papers about the improvement of sugar beet yield and its transformation into bioethanol. After situating the current political and economic context of the sugar beet crop, influence of factors during the crop growth is studied. Main factor influencing the crop yield and, consequently the bioethanol yield is the weather variability. Others parameters as climate change, fertilizer and crop management are evocated and explained in further paragraphs. Irrigation takes also place in semi-arid countries and plays a role in the different results. After the overview of the crop growth conditions, the sugar beet transformation into bioethanol has been pointed out with the most energetic steps, the different available raw materials from sugar beet and the optimal parameters to get the highest possible yield in terms of bioethanol. To provide economics on bioenergy production, the goal is to obtain the highest yield available in terms of sugar beet, sugar and then bioethanol. Some savings can be made with energy reduction during the fermentation or distillation steps. A sole guideline to reach this goal is not available because of the variability of the parameters depending on the location and on the weather forecasts.