ETHANOL - ECONOMY
News: Cereal
Grains have overtaken sugarcane as the primary feedstock for the production of
ethanol used in blending with petrol.
What’s in the news?
About
- In
the current supply year 2023- 2024, sugar mills and distilleries
supplied 401 crore liters of ethanol to oil marketing
companies.
- Of
that, 211 crore liters or 52.7% was ethanol produced
using maize and damaged foodgrains (mainly broken/ old rice not fit for
human consumption), while sugarcane-based feedstocks (molasses
and whole juice/ syrup) accounted for the remaining 190 crore
liters.
- This
is the first time that the contribution of grains to India’s ethanol
production has surpassed 50%.
What is Ethanol?
- Ethanol
is 99.9% pure alcohol that can be blended with
petrol.
- Alcohol
production involves fermentation of sugar using yeast. In
cane juice or molasses, sugar is present in the form of sucrose that
is broken down into glucose and fructose.
- Also
grains contain starch, a carbohydrate that has to first be
extracted and converted into sucrose and simpler sugars, before
their further fermentation, distillation and dehydration to ethanol.
Ethanol blending
- The ‘National
Policy on Biofuels’ notified by the government in 2018 envisaged
an indicative target of 20% ethanol blending in petrol by 2030.
- In
2014 only 1.5 per cent ethanol was
blended in petrol in India.
- Given
the encouraging performance and various interventions made by the
government since 2014, the 20% target was advanced to 2025-26.
Why is maize being promoted to
produce ethanol ?
- Till
2017-18, ethanol was being produced only from molasses, the
dense dark brown liquid byproduct containing sucrose that mills cannot
economically recover and crystallize into sugar.
- However
Sugarcane is a water-guzzling crop. A NITI Aayog report says
that just one liter of ethanol produced from sugarcane
consumes at least 2,860 liters of water.
- India
will require 1320 million tons of sugarcane, 19 million hectares
of additional land and 348 billion cubic meters of extra water to
produce enough ethanol to meet the 20% ethanol blending target of 2025.
- Further
the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) has restricted the
use of rice on concerns over cereal inflation and hence maize has emerged
as the top ethanol feedstock.
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ethanol-used-in-petrol-now-more-from-maize-damaged-foodgrains-than-sugar-9481641/