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Latest tech can produce more alcohol
USE OF latest technology and proper production management can help sugar industries in producing huge quantity of alcohol from its wastes to meet the requirement of alcohol by the petroleum industry.
USE OF latest technology and proper production management can help sugar industries in producing huge quantity of alcohol from its wastes to meet the requirement of alcohol by the petroleum industry.
A former bio-scientist of the National Sugar Institute (NSI) Dr PK Agarwal told Hindustan Times that recently the petroleum industries had floated a tender for the supply of about 600 million litres of alcohol every year. This was because the demand for alcohol had shot up following the government sanction for mixing five per cent alcohol in petrol to contain the high air pollution rate. The government had also proposed to enhance the existing mixing of alcohol by five per cent. But in the absence of adequate production of alcohol it was not possible to mix 10 per cent alcohol in the petrol, Dr Agarwal said.
He said with the existing technology sugar factories were able to produce 100 tonne of molasses from 2,500 tonne of sugar cane. Out of one ton of molasses 250 litres of alcohol was being produced at each sugar factory. However, the rate of alcohol production could be enhanced by adopting latest techniques being used all over the world, he said.
He said Indian sugar technologists needed to develop indigenous technology, as the climatic conditions here would not be suitable for the foreign technology. He said if sugar industries were updated they would be able to earn more profits by converting their industrial waste into utility products. .
Dr Agarwal said that there was a need to create a pollution control wing at every sugar mill and officials appointed by the wing should have the prospects of promotion and better pay scales. At present no sugar industry had a separate wing for pollution control. Engineers and sugar technologists were dealing with the problem in a routine manner, while it was required to be handled by the persons having degree in environmental sciences, he said.
He said no doubt the sugar factories had implemented the government directives but they were not being supervised by environment specialists. This created the whole problem for the industry. Sugar industries should create a separate department in addition to the existing departments of sugar manufacturing and sugar engineering.
Besides, there was a need for creating awareness among the employees and the officials connected with the industry with regard to pollution control. Unless the awareness was created the government objectives of containing pollution would not materialise, he said.
