The Hindu Business Line : 3 new units to produce ethanol from sorghum

In the pipeline
A group of NRIs are planning a Rs 160-crore plant near Nellore.
Ultimate Bio Fuels, the Indian arm of a US company, will set up a 200 kld plant near Vizag.

K.V. Kurmanath

Hyderabad, Nov. 3 Now that a successful model is in place where ethanol is produced from sweet sorghum, entrepreneurs from India and abroad are in the process of replicating the model in Nellore and Visakhapatnam.

Rusni Distilleries, the company which incubated the idea at Icrisat (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics) and scaled-up later into a unit, itself is planning to double the capacity to 80 kilo litres a day (kld) after March next.

While a group of NRIs are planning a Rs 160-crore plant near Nellore, Ultimate Bio Fuels, the Indian arm of a US company, will set up a 200 kld plant near Visakhapatnam.

Interestingly, Dr A.R. Palani Swamy, Managing Director of Rusni, will be playing the role of anchor by way of providing technical know-how and design.

When all these projects go on stream, the total capacity of ethanol (from sweet sorghum) would soar to 400 kld.

“Nellore, being close to Chennai and Bangalore, is a strategic location for setting up the plant. We have acquired land. We are doing spade work ahead of implementing the project,” Prof. S Venku Reddy, former scientist at NG Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU), told Business Line. A group of NRIs joined hands to pool up resources for the project, which is expected to start commercial operations next year. Sources said a US-based company has started an Indian arm called Ultimate Biofuels for setting up a 200-kld plant near Visakhapatnam.

Meanwhile, Icrisat, Rusni and a Mozambique Government company formed a joint venture company to set up an ethanol plant with an initial capacity of 100 kld.

The plant would go for commercial production in 16 months from now.

New technology

Even as the model gets more takers, Rusni has begun work on the second generation ethanol production. “We have entered into an agreement with a multi-national company for producing ethanol from fibre (of sweet sorghum),” Dr Palani Swamy said.

“The pilot is under way to produce 1,000 kld from this process. The idea is to reduce cost of production from the present 45 cents (to produce one litre of ethanol) to 30-31 cents,” he said.

“Once the experiment is over, the design would be incorporated into all the new plants,” he added.

Besides, Rusni is also planning to set up a sorghum malt-based plant in a Telangana district.

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