HYDERABAD: With the country falling short of ethanol production from sugarcane with respect to the Ethanol Blending Programme -- to sell petrol mixed with 10 per cent ethanol by 2022 -- Hyderabad based Indian Institute of Millet Research(IIMR) is working on filling the ethanol-gap by using sweet sorghum juice.
Sweet sorghum is a variety of sorghum or jowar/jonna, which has high sugar levels in its stalk thus making it useful for processing of ethanol.
Speaking to Express, Dr AV Umakanth, principal scientist and principal investigator (Sweet and High Biomass Sorghum) at IIMR said, “While it has been known since long that juice from sweet sorghum can be used to produce ethanol, the ethanol procurement prices were very low, and as a result sweet sorghum was not very in the country.
However, now that the prices are right -- at around Rs 59.13 per litre -- it is a good time to push sweet sorghum, given that production limit of sugarcane-derived ethanol is saturating.” IIMR and National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Ltd (NFCSFL), has decided to test its profitability by pushing the project at two mills.