Plan to produce ethanol from cashew apple, coffee pulp

Board to set up pilot plants in the coastal belt of the State for the purpose

December 30, 2012 11:48 am | Updated 11:48 am IST - MANGALORE

Schoolchildren at the Dakshina Kannada Bio-fuel Information and Demonstration Centre at NIT-K in Mangalore on Saturday. Photo: H.S. Manjunath

Schoolchildren at the Dakshina Kannada Bio-fuel Information and Demonstration Centre at NIT-K in Mangalore on Saturday. Photo: H.S. Manjunath

Y.B. Ramakrishna, Executive Chairman, Karnataka State Biofuel Development Board, said on Saturday that the board was planning to set up pilot plants for production of bio-ethanol from cashew apple and coffee pulp in the coastal belt in the State.

The plan was likely to materialise in six months from now, he told presspersons on the sidelines of a function organised by the board to inaugurate the Dakshina Kannada district-level biofuel information and demonstration centre at the National Institute of Technology – Karnataka (NIT-K) at Surathkal.

A.K. Monnappa, Managing Director of the board, said that certain issues pertaining to excise rules would have to be sorted out before setting up the pilot plants. The sites for setting up the pilot plants were yet to be identified.

C.T. Ravi, Minister in-charge of Dakshina Kannada and Minister for Higher Education inaugurated the centre. Speaking on the occasion Mr. Ramakrishna said that it was the 32nd centre of the board in the State. It would provide information on biofuel to farmers, entrepreneurs, students, scientists, researchers and others in general. The information would be on different biofuel species and their cultivation, methods of harvesting seeds, processing, value addition and marketing.

The centre had an oil extracting unit, a bio-diesel production unit, laboratory for testing the quality of biofuel produced and other associated facilities.

A staff member at the centre told the visiting media persons that a litre of bio-diesel could be produced from four kilograms of “honge beeja” (pongamia seeds). He said that a litre of bio-diesel could be produced from 2 kg of “sura honne” seeds.

Earlier addressing presspersons Mr. Ramakrishna said that the 33rd centre of the board would be opened at Chikmagalur.

He said that implementing bio-fuel promotion programmes have not yielded expected results because raw materials of bio-fuel were being exported from the country in large quantity.

There was a need to impose some restrictions on the export of bio-diesel raw materials from the country for domestic production of bio-fuel.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.