The costs of sugar production from different feedstocks and processing technologies

Sugar production is essential for the production of foods, biochemicals, and biofuels via biochemical or catalytic routes. Sugar-containing crops, and starch-based and cellulosic feedstocks are resources for sugar production via juice extraction, starch saccharification, and pretreatment and hydrolysis, respectively. Technologies have been developed to attain a high sugar yield; however, production costs are a major consideration in commercializing newly developed approaches to the production of sugars. In this review, the fixed capital and production costs of sugar produced from first- and second-generation crops are summarized. As expected, first-generation crops provide the lowest fixed capital costs, ranging from 0.01 to 0.13 $ kg ⁻¹ feedstock, and have production costs ranging from 0.22 to 0.55 $ kg ⁻¹ sugar. For cellulosic crops, because of their recalcitrant structure and complex processing, the fixed capital and production costs are higher, ranging from 0.02 to 1.10 $ kg ⁻¹ feedstock and 0.10 to 3.37 $ kg ⁻¹ sugar, respectively.