Fuelling the Future: Assessing the Capacity of Albertan Crops as Bioethanol Feedstocks

CWSF · 2026 Natural Resources Bronze Medal

Hania Riaz · Junior Division · Grades 7–8

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Overview

At current consumption rates, oil and gasoline reserves will be depleted within the next 47 years (Wordometer 2026). To reduce carbon dioxide emissions and prevent future energy shortages, global efforts are shifting toward alternative energy sources. Biofuel involves producing renewable fuels from biomass (plant material). Alberta, whose economy is heavily reliant on natural gas extraction and processing, has strong potential to pivot and become a major biofuel producer due to its dominant agricultural industry. In my project, I assessed the capacity of common Alberta-grown crops to be converted into bioethanol through yeast fermentation. I was also able to significantly improve ethanol yield by applying thermal and enzymatic treatments to the plant material. These findings suggest a practical and scalable pathway for Alberta to transition toward renewable energy using resources it already abundantly produces.

Video

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Video

[Transcript]: Hello, my name is Hania Riaz, I’m from Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Biofuel is renewable energy sourced from biomass.

Bioethanol is a type of biofuel in which plant material is converted to ethanol, an alcohol that can power an ignition engine and can be blended into gasoline fuels to reduce harmful emission.

I wanted to determine which Alberta crops produce the most ethanol, and whether thermal and enzymatic processing could improve their yield.

I tested each crop using anaerobic yeast fermentation.

By measuring carbon dioxide produced, I could estimate ethanol output.

Sugarcane and beets produced the highest yields without processing due to their high simple sugar content. However, α-amylase significantly increased ethanol production in starch-based crops—by up to 700%—with wheat and barley becoming comparable to the traditional feedstock sugarcane.

These findings suggest a practical and scalable pathway for Alberta to transition toward renewable energy using resources it already abundantly produces.

Why?

Introduction: My name is Hania Riaz and I am a grade seven student from Medicine Hat, Alberta. I am an avid volleyball player and I love to play both violin & piano. I have a great passion for environmental science and biology.

Background: The oil and gas sector accounts for up to 25% of Alberta’s provincial GDP (Government of Alberta 2025). Gasoline’s low burning temperature, high volatility, and high chemical energy make it a valuable fuel for ignition engines used in vehicles. However, projections estimate that oil and gas reserves will be entirely consumed by 2073 (Wordometer 2026). The unrenewable nature of gasoline coupled with its damaging environmental effects are motivating the current push for alternative, renewable energy sources. The Government of Alberta has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and must identify economically viable pathways to transition while remaining a major contributor in the energy sector (Government of Alberta 2025).

Biofuels, the burning of biomass (plant matter), are a carbon neutral alternative to gasoline. Bioethanol fuels are a specific type of biofuel that rely upon yeast to convert biomass into ethanol fuel. Ethanol derived from biofuel production can also be blended into gasoline as an oxidizer to encourage complete combustion (prevents harmful CO emissions).

Objective: To assess the capacity of common Albertan crops to be converted into ethanol for potential use as a biofuel. I then performed both thermal and enzymatic processing of each crop to determine if the ethanol yield could be improved using simplistic methods.

How?

Procedure:

No Pre-Treatment: The basic experimental design makes use of the stoichiometry of the process of anaerobic fermentation.

C6H12O6 → 2 C2H5OH + 2 CO2 + 2 ATP

By inverting a test tube full of plant material and a 8% yeast solution, a vacuum is created and anaerobic fermentation occurs. Both carbon dioxide and ethanol are produced in the same stoichiometric ratios, meaning that the production of carbon dioxide is indicative of ethanol production. As carbon dioxide gas is produced, the solution is displaced. Using the conversion of 7mL of displaced solution = 1 mL of carbon dioxide, ethanol production is tracked over a period 20 minutes (1200 seconds).

The crops tested were barley, beets, corn starch, potato starch, sugar cane, sweet potato, and wheat. A negative control without any fermentable material and a positive control with processed, white sugar were also tested as a baseline. 15 replicates were performed for each plant.

Anaerobic fermentation is most efficient on monosaccharides (such as sucrose and fructose), a single unit of carbohydrate. Therefore, various processing methods can be applied to hopefully convert crops with a higher starch and cellulose (complex types of sugars called polysaccharide) to simpler sugars.

Thermal Treatment: Plant material was boiled at 100°C for fifteen minutes. High temperatures cause plant material to swell up and gelatinize, exposing glucose chains (increasing accessibility). Additionally, high temperatures destabilize glycosidic bonds that hold complex sugars together.

α-Amylase Treatment: α-Amylase is a common enzyme found in human saliva that breaks α-glycosidic bonds, breaking down starches into maltose (disaccharide) and dextrins (shorter glucose chains), both of which are simpler sugars.

What?

Controls Validated Experiment → The positive control (white sugar) and negative control (absence of fermentable material) performed as expected. The positive control produced more carbon dioxide gas with pre-treatment, demonstrating that thermal and enzymatic processing methods were effective.

Without Processing, Sugarcane and Beets Produce the Most Carbon Dioxide Gas → Sugarcane produced a mean of 6.6 ± 0.8 mL of CO2(g) and Beets produced a mean of 5.2 ± 1.0 mL of CO2(g). The high potential for ethanol conversion from these feedstocks reflect their high composition of simple sugars and monosaccharides. However, considering that sugarcane is not grown domestically and beets are only grown in certain areas of Southern Alberta (such as Taber/Lethbridge area). This initial finding motivated me to investigate methods to improve the ethanol yield of more common Alberta crops.

α-Amylase Processed Plant Material Better than Thermal Processing → On average α-Amylase improved carbon dioxide production by up to 4 times greater than thermal processing. Enzymatic breakdown of starches may have been more effective as it catalyzes the hydrolysis of glycosidic bonds directly, while thermal processes only make glycosidic bonds more likely to break.

Ethanol Yield from Starch-based Substrates Improved Most → Wheat (709.33 ± 414.5%), Potato starch (659.6 ± 440.6%) , and Barley (373.68 ± 209.6%) showed the greatest improvement in bioethanol potential after enzymatic processing. With enzymatic processing, wheat became the most viable biofuel crop out of the whole experiment, an unexpected result as sugarcane and sweet corn are traditionally regarded as the most efficient bioethanol feedstocks, highlighting how enzymatic treatment can alter overall crop performance.

Sugar-based Substrates Performed Worse after Processing → Sugarcane experienced a decrease in ethanol yield after both enzymatic (-14.16 ± 27.77%) and thermal (-6.05 ± 36.56%) processing. The addition of α-Amylase may have interfered with fermentation by slightly diluting the concentration of sugar. Ultimately, the α-Amylase likely had few complex sugars to act upon and was unable to increase ethanol yield. Thermal processing of sugarcane may have promoted side reactions and caramelization (breakdown of sugars at high temperatures) that were unhelpful for fermentation.

Variability with Starch-based Substrates → Especially with enzymatic and thermal pre-treatments, starch-based substrates (specifically Wheat, Potato Starch, and Barley) had high variability and standard deviations. This can be attributed to the more complex and lengthy breakdown of polysaccharides:

Starch → Dextrins → Maltose → Glucose

The multi-step processes of converting starch to fermentable sugar introduces variancy within the starch samples as each reaction is affected by sugar availability and differing optimal reaction conditions.

Use of Statistics → The statistical techniques used in this project were relatively simple. Standard deviations were calculated for all means and are represented graphically as error bars. Standard deviation was calculated using the “=STDEV(-)” formula in Google Sheets (the square root of variance from the mean). Simply put, standard deviation is a measure of variance in datapoints; it represents the average difference between data points and the mean.

So What?

Considering both ethanol yield and crop feasibility within Alberta, wheat and barley, when combined with α-amylase processing, emerge as the most promising candidates for future bioethanol production. While sugarcane and beets produced the highest yields without treatment, their limited availability in Alberta reduces their practicality at scale.

Bioethanol has traditionally been associated with tropical countries such as Brazil, where high-sugar crops like sugarcane dominate production. In contrast, this study demonstrates that Alberta can achieve comparable bioethanol potential by optimizing locally grown, starch-based crops. Through enzymatic processing, wheat and barley were able to outperform traditionally favored feedstocks under Alberta-relevant conditions.

These findings highlight that the future of bioethanol production in Alberta lies not in replicating tropical models, but in adapting to regional strengths. By leveraging existing agricultural infrastructure and applying targeted enzymatic treatment, Alberta has the potential to develop a sustainable and locally optimized bioethanol industry.

Wheat and barley represent the most realistic and scalable future of bioethanol production in Alberta

What's Next?

Some extensions that I am interested in investigating further would be:

Optimizing α-Amylase reaction conditions (such as pH, temperature, salinity, etc)

Using plant waste (such as straw or husks) as fermentable material as a way to minimize wastefulness

Using other amylases, such as β-Amylase or Glucoamylases, to determine the ideal enzymes for various crops

Attempting to create a way to distill ethanol from yeast fermentation solution to allow for direct measurement of bioethanol feedstock capacity.

Thanks

I am very grateful for the team at Praxis who helped in organizing the Southeastern Alberta Science Fair and preparing me for the science fair. Thank you for my family, who have been very supportive and helpful. I would like to thank Mr. Penny from Notre Dame Academy for providing the test tube tube stand that I used for all my experiments.x