The Hindu Business Line : Cashew apple seen a viable source to produce ethanol

The countries targeted initially by the UNIDO are India, Brazil and Kenya. The project, he said, is aimed at utilising cashew apple as a raw material.

G.K. Nair

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Kochi, July 23 The UNIDO Centre for South-South Industrial Cooperation (UCSSIC), New Delhi, has identified cashew apple as an alternative to food crops that are currently used for ethanol production. It has now entrusted the institutions in the country to develop a ‘Clean and Viable Technology for Economically Sustainable Industrial Processes utilising Cashew Apple as a Renewable Feedstock for the Production of Ethanol Fuel’.

The Cashew Research Centre and Department of Agronomy of the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) at Vellayani near Thiruvananthapuram has been asked to prepare the project and it is currently under finalisation, Dr M. Abdul Salam, an expert on cashew, Professor and Chairman Department of Agronomy, KAU College of Agriculture, told Business Line.

The objective of the project, Dr Salam, said, is to “develop a clean and viable sustainable industrial process for production of ethanol fuel from the cashew apple as the raw feedstock”.

The cashew apple is abundantly available in about 30 producing countries and it is being totally wasted. The countries targeted initially by the UNIDO are India, Brazil and Kenya.

The project, he said, is aimed at utilising cashew apple as a raw material; undertaking technology mapping and benchmarking with regard to global best practices for manufacturing ethanol fuel; strengthening partnership and enhancing capacity building for research & development and establishing technical cooperation between leading Indian, Kenyan and Brazilian R&D institutions; capacity building for skill development of scientists, technologists, engineers, and researchers.

According to Dr Salam, the organisations which would be providing technical cooperation are the CSIR; CFTRI, Mysore; KAU; Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy; National Research Centre for Cashew(NRCC) Puttur, under ICAR; Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Goa and All India Distillers Association, New Delhi, he said.

In addition, two organisations from Brazil and one from Kenya – Kenya Industrial Research & Development Institution (KIRDI), Nairobi – have also been identified as counterparts, he said.

Bio-ethanol as an alternative

Bio-ethanol researchers all over the world are looking for alternative sources of energy, to meet the energy requirements of the populations as the renewable energy sources are depleting fast. US and Brazil have already gone ahead in research and commercial production of bio-energy in a major way, he said. In recent years bio-ethanol is identified as an important renewable source of energy which is clean and usable in combustion engines.

Dr Salam said ethanol is an alcoholic fuel prepared from the sugars found in corn, sorghum, wheat, potato, cassava, rice, sugarcane, sugar beets etc.

Utilisation of food crops such as maize, wheat, sugarcane, cassava, potato, etc., for its production could become a serious threat to world food security of billions of people in the near future. It is at this juncture the, cashew apple, an important organic resource generated in cashew plantations and wasted in large quantities becomes a very attractive substrate to produce bio ethanol, Dr Salam said.

Cashew industry uses only the raw nuts for the manufacture of cashew kernels and almost the entire quantity of the cashew apple remain wasted in the plantation itself, except in certain places such as Goa.

Additional income to growers would motivate them to take up its cultivation in thousands of hectares of waste land available and lying idle in the country, he pointed out.

In Goa, cashew apple is utilised for the production of fenni, which is a liquor containing 40 to 45 percent ethanol.

A small quantity of cashew apple is also used for the production of various products like juice, jam, candy, pickle etc.

Therefore, the potential for bio-ethanol production from cashew apple is very high, he said.

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