Ethanol from sweet sorghum soon

Rusni Distilleries Private Limited, an enterprise promoted by the Agri-Business Incubator (ABI) at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), will start commercial production of ethanol from sweet sorghum from June 2006.

Aare Palani Swamy, promoter of Rusni Distilleries, said, "Icrisat has provided us research assistance as well as help in getting clearances for the successful execution of the project. We will commence commercial production from June 2006." Swamy was on a visit to the Rusni's upcoming plant at Mohammed Shapur village in Medak district.

The plant, with an ethanol producing capacity of 40,000 litres per day and about 12 million litres a year, is being set up at a cost of $5.3 million.

The company intends to manufacture biofuel and extra neutral alcohol (ENA) at the plant. The plant, which has the potential to utilise sweet sorghum produce from about 20,000 acres, is expected to provide direct employment to 200 people and indirect employment to 20,000 farmers.

The ABI-Icrisat did a study of sweet sorghum cultivation and provided four different cultivars while Rusni made the ethanol recovery study. The distilleries also got a US patent for the production technology and plans to provide turnkey consultancy.

Ethanol production through sweet sorghum has many advantages. While sweet sorghum requires as little as 8,000 litres of water per acre, sugarcane guzzles 36,000 litres per acre.

The former is much cheaper to cultivate as it requires much less fertilisers than sugarcane crop. While it costs Rs 14.89 to make one litre of ethanol through sugarcane molasses route, it doesn't cost more than Rs 13.11 a litre through the sweet sorghum route, Swamy said, adding that the rising popularity of biodiesel and the rising requirement of pharmagrade ethanol was expected to see a further rise in the demand for ethanol.

Currently, there are 27 distilleries in India and the total ethanol production during 2002-03 was 160 million litres while the actual requirement was 400 million litres.