Saccharine materials used for ethanol production at a large scale are juice and molasses of sugar cane and sugar beet. Molasses is a byproduct which is concentrated mother liquid after sugar crystallization. Sugar concentration of molasses is around 50% and contains glucose, fructose and sucrose as main sugar components. These saccharine materials are good substrate for ethanol fermentation by yeast and Zymomonas. A lot of cane juice is used for ethanol production in Brazil and India.

Popular ethanol fermentation process in Brazil is continuous or semi-continuous fermentation process called Melle-Boinot process in which yeast cells are recovered from beer through centrifuge and recycled to fermentation tank after sterilization of contaminated bacteria with dilute sulfuric acid at pH 3. Ethanol fermentation at high concentration of yeast cells can make beer containing 6 to 8 % of ethanol from cane juice (11-17% sugar concentration) in about 15 h of fermentation period. Molasses is used for fermentation after two-times dilution or mixing with cane juice or beet juice.

When fermentation yield is 82% (based on total sugar), and sugar concentration of molasses is 55%, the amount of molasses required to produce 1 m3 (kL) of 95% ethanol is 3.3 t-wet.

Unique saccharine materials are milk whey and citrus molasses. In dairy industry of New Zealand, for example, a large amount of milk whey containing about 4% lactose is discharged. They use the waste whey for ethanol fermentation to recover value-added byproduct and to reduce BOD.

A large amount of citrus peel is discharged in citrus juice manufacture. Secondary juice from citrus peel containing about 8% sugar and bitter components is concentrated to citrus molasses of sugar concentration of over 40% for ethanol production.