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    Make ethanol from surplus food grains: Draft policy

    Synopsis

    A faster adoption of biofuels can help cut oil import bill, boost job generation, spur indigenous technological development and cut environmental pollution, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.

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    Pradhan said during the workshop, many constructive suggestions related to feedstock management, technology, capacity augmentation, fiscal incentives and supply chain management were received.
    The government plans to allow foodgrains during surplus production years to be used for production of ethanol that can be blended with petrol, in a bid to widen the availability of raw materials needed for making biofuel, according to a draft national policy on biofuels.

    The draft policy, prepared by the oil ministry, has proposed an indicative target of 20% blending of ethanol in petrol and 5% of biodiesel in diesel by 2030.

    The current blending ratio is 2% for petrol and less than 0.5% for diesel. A faster adoption of biofuels can help cut oil import bill, boost job generation, spur indigenous technological development and cut environmental pollution, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday while addressing a workshop to discuss the draft policy on biofuels.

    He said oil marketing companies would handhold biofuel stakeholders as long as they want since this is crucial for the development and sustenance of the biofuel industry. “The policy will allow production of ethanol from damaged foodgrains like wheat, broken rice, etc. which are unfit for human consumption,” said the draft policy.

    “During an agriculture crop year when there is projected oversupply of foodgrains as anticipated by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, the policy will allow conversion of these surplus quantities of food grains to ethanol.”

    Allowing foodgrains for conversion will “not only help in utilising the installed capacities of grain based distilleries but also cover all the raw materials from which ethanol can be produced harnessing fully developed 1G technologies with minimum investment”, the draft policy said.

    At present, ethanol for bending comes from molasses, a byproduct of sugar industry. At the current level of cane and sugar productions of about 350 million metric tonnes (MMT) and 26-28 MMT per annum respectively, the maximum quantity of molasses available is about 13 MMT, sufficient to produce three billion litres of alcohol or ethanol.


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    ( Originally published on Nov 22, 2017 )
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