O CO₂ das dornas: Toda usina de etanol solta um gás quase puro, que hoje vai para o ar

Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura

No. 089 Energy · biomass Biogenic carbon 1/4

The CO₂ from the vats

Every ethanol mill gives off an almost pure gas that now goes into the air

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Map of São Paulo state with brick-red circles, proportional to the fermentation CO₂ estimated in each municipality in the 2025/26 harvest, over lightly tinted municipalities that have a mill. The circles cluster in the north and centre of the state, around Ribeirão Preto, and thin out to the east and south. A callout points to Guaíra, with 271 kt from three mills, the largest point in the state; another points to Piracicaba, with 115 kt, 10 km from a gas pipeline. In the panel, monthly bars show the CO₂ concentrated from May to October and almost nil from December to March, and further bars list the six largest municipalities. — Fig. 089 São Paulo State (SP) EPSG:4674 Source: ANP, Kheshgi, H. S. and Prince, R. C. (2005). Sequestration of fermentation CO₂ from ethanol production. Energy, 30, 1865–1871, EPE, IBGE

In the fermentation vat, yeast turns cane sugar into ethanol and releases CO₂ in step: 0.955 kg of gas per kg of alcohol, about 0.75 t per m³. It is almost pure CO₂, of biological origin, and today it goes into the air. In the 2025/26 harvest, São Paulo’s mills made 12.1 billion litres of ethanol; by stoichiometry, about 8.9 million tonnes of CO₂ left the vats, from 145 mills in 119 municipalities. Guaíra, with three mills, leads with about 271,000 t; Pitangueiras, Sertãozinho and Buritizal each pass 190,000. The gas follows the crushing season: 1.4 million t in August and almost nothing from December to March. As ANP publishes output only by state, each mill’s share is estimated from its authorised capacity; everything here is an estimate. First plate of the collection “Biogenic carbon”.

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At a glance

Layers

usinas_etanol point 145 SP mills with authorised capacity in the harvest: estimated ethanol and CO₂, at the municipality’s interior point
municipios polygon 645 municipalities: fermentation CO₂ (2025/26 harvest and 2024), biogas, fossil and possible e-methane

Metadata

Sources: ANP — Ethanol Producers Dynamic Panel: authorised capacity by mill and output by state and month (pb-da-etanol.zip) (2026)
ANP — Resolution No. 907/2022, Table 1 (density and alcohol content of anhydrous and hydrous ethanol) (2022)
Kheshgi, H. S. and Prince, R. C. (2005). Sequestration of fermentation CO₂ from ethanol production. Energy, 30, 1865–1871 (2005)
EPE — WebMap: existing gas pipelines, as published in the MapBiomas infrastructure database (distance to pipeline) (2022)
IBGE — Municipal Mesh 2025 (2025)
Extent: São Paulo State (SP)
CRS / Projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674)
EPSG:4674
Software: Node.js · d3-geo · QGIS
Method: São Paulo’s anhydrous and hydrous ethanol output in the 2025/26 harvest (ANP, by month) shared out among mills by their authorised capacity in each month, converted to mass by the density in the ANP specification and to CO₂ by the stoichiometry of alcoholic fermentation (0.955 kg of CO₂ per kg of ethanol); summed by municipality.
Version: v1.0.0
Licence: CC BY 4.0
DOI: being registered on Zenodo

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The map without a frame, with legend, scale, reference system and credit written on it: ready for papers, lectures and slides. In two versions: with the basemap (neighbours and sea) or only the mapped area, on white.

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How to cite

Cerejo, L. N. (2026). O CO₂ das dornas: toda usina de etanol solta um gás quase puro, que hoje vai para o ar [The CO₂ from the vats: Every ethanol mill gives off an almost pure gas that now goes into the air] (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Essencial. https://aikiesan.github.io/essencial-geo/en/maps/089-co2-das-dornas-sp/

@dataset{cerejo2026_co2_das_dornas_sp,
  author    = {Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura},
  title     = {O CO₂ das dornas: Toda usina de etanol solta um gás quase puro, que hoje vai para o ar},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Essencial},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  url       = {https://aikiesan.github.io/essencial-geo/en/maps/089-co2-das-dornas-sp/},
  language  = {portuguese},
  note      = {English title: The CO₂ from the vats: Every ethanol mill gives off an almost pure gas that now goes into the air. Licence CC BY 4.0}
}

How to read this plate area, projection, scale, legend and source · 3 terms

1 Area: São Paulo State (SP) The area the plate covers. Outside it, neighbours and sea are drawn in grey, just for orientation.
2 Coordinates and projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) The layers are in SIRGAS 2000; the drawing’s projection is written in the colophon at the foot of the panel.
3 Scale: Graphic scale bar in the panel The scale bar is true on the central meridian; away from it, measured distances vary a little.
4 Legend and layers: 2 layers in the GeoPackage · point, polygon Read the legend before the map: it tells you whether a colour is a rate or a class, and whether a circle is a total.
5 Sources: ANP (2026); ANP (2022); Kheshgi, H. S. and Prince, R. C. (2005). Sequestration of fermentation CO₂ from ethanol production. Energy, 30, 1865–1871 (2005); EPE (2022); IBGE (2025) Every figure comes from a public source, with its year. The data sheet gives each one’s address.

Terms on this plate

Harvest year: Cane years are not calendar years: in the Centre-South the harvest runs from April to March; in the Northeast, from September to August. That is why the two regions crush in opposite months.
Biogenic CO₂: CO₂ from recently grown biomass, such as that from ethanol fermentation and biogas upgrading: it returns to the air what the plant took shortly before. It can be captured and used.
ANP: Brazil’s National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels: it licenses ethanol and biodiesel plants, tracks filling-station sales and sets the biomethane specification.

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Method notes · No. 089

The CO₂ from ethanol vats in São Paulo

Português · English

Plate No. 089, the first of four in the collection Biogenic carbon: how much CO₂ ethanol fermentation releases in each São Paulo municipality in one harvest.

What the files contain

dados/sp_co2_fermentacao_usinas.csv: one row per mill, with CNPJ (company tax number), company name, municipality, authorised anhydrous and hydrous capacity (m³/day), months with capacity in the harvest, share of the apportionment (%), estimated ethanol (m³), estimated CO₂ (t) and the municipality’s distance to the nearest gas pipeline (km).
sp_carbono_biogenico.gpkg.zip (in the carbono-sp-2026 release): the same GPKG as plates 089 to 092. This plate uses the usinas_etanol layer (style co2) and, in the municipios layer, the fields usinas_etanol, etanol_m3_safra, co2_fermentacao_t and co2_fermentacao_2024_t.

Method

Output: ANP publishes anhydrous and hydrous ethanol output by state and month. We summed São Paulo’s from April 2025 to March 2026 (the 2025/26 harvest): 5,141,755 m³ of anhydrous and 6,952,582 m³ of hydrous. For plate 091 we also used the year 2024: 13,729,549 m³.
Apportionment: the same database gives, month by month, each mill’s authorised capacity. A mill’s weight is the sum, over the harvest months, of the larger of its two capacities (anhydrous or hydrous); the state’s output is divided by that weight.
Mass: anhydrous at 785.96 kg of ethanol per m³ (791.5 kg/m³, the density limit at 20 °C, times 99.3% m/m, the minimum content); hydrous at 756.07 kg of ethanol per m³ (density 805.2 to 811.2 kg/m³ with 92.5 to 94.6% m/m ethanol, at the mid-points). Source: ANP Resolution No. 907/2022, Table 1.
CO₂: in alcoholic fermentation, C₆H₁₂O₆ → 2 C₂H₅OH + 2 CO₂. With IUPAC molar masses (CO₂ 44.009 g/mol, ethanol 46.068 g/mol), this gives 0.9553 kg of CO₂ per kg of ethanol, as in Kheshgi and Prince (2005): 0.751 t of CO₂ per m³ of anhydrous and 0.722 t per m³ of hydrous.
Distance: from the municipality’s interior point to the nearest transmission or distribution pipeline (EPE, via MapBiomas, the same database as plate 057).

A correction on the coefficient: the “about 0.76” figure often quoted is per litre of ethanol, not per kg. By mass, stoichiometry gives 0.955 kg of CO₂ per kg of ethanol; by volume, 0.955 × 0.79 kg/L ≈ 0.75 kg of CO₂ per litre.

Data downloaded

ANP, pb-da-etanol.zip, linked from the Ethanol Producers Dynamic Panel page: https://www.gov.br/anp/pt-br/assuntos/producao-e-fornecimento-de-biocombustiveis/etanol/arquivos-etanol/pb-da-etanol.zip, downloaded on 18/10/2026 (files Etanol_Capacidade 2021_2026.csv, Etanol_Produção.csv and Etanol_MatériaPrima.csv).

Limitations

It is an estimate. Each mill’s actual output is not public; apportioning by authorised capacity assumes all mills use the same share of their capacity over the harvest.
Each mill’s point is the municipality’s interior point, not the plant. Municipalities with several mills add them all at the same point.
Only fermentation CO₂ is counted; the CO₂ from burning bagasse in the boilers, also biogenic, is left out.
The CO₂ is released only during crushing, concentrated from May to October: any use or capture would need storage or seasonal operation.
In the 2025/26 harvest the feedstock was almost all cane (131 million t) and molasses (7.4 million t); corn ethanol in São Paulo is marginal (24,000 t of corn).

View this map’s folder on GitHub