Assam Bio Refinery: Assam’s bamboo-based refinery generates curiosity amongst personal buyers from diverse sectors

A number of personal and public buyers are, in the meantime, ready for March when the Assam Bio Refinery is ready to begin manufacturing ethanol from bamboo. Assam Bio Refinery is a three way partnership firm of Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) together with Fortum and Chempolis from Finland.

Bhaskar Phukan, managing director of NRL mentioned, “NTPC is already in dialogue with us. They’re going to put up the same plant. The Meghalaya authorities has additionally invited us. We now have additionally recognized a chunk of land. Round 20-25 tea gardens have approached us. They’ve lots of waste land inside the tea gardens.”

Phukan was talking to ET on the sidelines of the lately concluded Environmental Sustainability Summit in Mumbai.

NRL, a three way partnership firm of Oil India Ltd, Assam authorities and Engineers India Ltd, will function the nation’s first bamboo-based bio-refinery being constructed with an funding of Rs 4,200 crore. The enterprise has already generated curiosity amongst power sector buyers, mentioned Phukan.

With India going through shortages of meals sources of ethanol like sugar, maize, rice, the nation is making an attempt to advertise manufacturing of ethanol from non-food biomass, referred to as 2G ethanol.“As soon as the mission goes onstream, we wish to ship our engineering consultants to see if there’s any chance for optimising the prices of the Assam bio-refinery,” the top of one of many nation’s prime sugar producers mentioned, requesting anonymity.“The price of one unit of photo voltaic power was Rs 16/unit at first, when it was not inexpensive. As we speak, it’s Rs 2/unit and it’s inexpensive. Equally, ethanol from bamboo at an funding of Rs 4,200 crore isn’t going to be viable,” the particular person mentioned.

NRL expects its returns on funding to extend from the refinery’s value-added merchandise. “At current, we count on that the return on funding can be about 14%. Nonetheless, after valorisation of the byproducts, the return on funding can improve additional. We’re working with IIT Guwahati to make bio-degradable plastic from furfural, the byproduct of bamboo-based ethanol manufacturing,” mentioned Phukan.

“Any person is coming to spend money on furfural. Any person is coming to speculate into enzymes. That ecosystem is getting developed, which can fall in place over a interval. Time has come to speculate right here,” he mentioned.

“As soon as we go onstream, there will likely be lots of curiosity in producing bamboo that’s available and will be grown simply. We try to reveal in order that tomorrow, individuals come and make investments. We’re making a demo-ecosystem. As soon as the ecosystem falls in place, lots of people will rush,” he added.

In Europe, many corporations have invested in 2G ethanol. India can also be betting massive on it. “We now have an enormous consumption mendacity forward. There can be lots of takers,” mentioned Phukan.