To tackle the problem of paddy straw burning resulting in irreparable loss to land fertility along with environmental degradation, the Punjab Government has decided to set up Asia’s first ever bio-ethanol refinery. The State New and Renewable Energy Minister Bikram Singh Majithia on Thursday presented a conceptual plan to set up Rs950 crore second generation Bio-ethanol producing refinery leading to set up five more such refineries with one billion US dollars investment.
For the same, Punjab would ink a memorandum of understanding with Beta Renewables, Novozymes and CVC India Infrastructure Private limited. CVC Indian chairman K Krishan, making a detailed presentation, proposed that initially one Bio-refinery project with design capacity of 60,000 tonnes of Cellulosic ethanol per year (75 million litres per year) would be set up in the state with three lakh tones of paddy straw as feedstock.
He said that the proposed plant would also generate co-products of Biogas, Pellets and compost through processing bio-refinery effluents and pellets through processing surplus lignin, residue of bio-refinery and lignin further could be used for a captive co-generation plant. Krishan said that the state produces 15 mn tones of paddy straw and its maximum usage for such bio-ethanol refineries could result in avoiding major environmental problem of burning of paddy straw.