Molasses

Listing ID #3209814

Molasses is being the most important and valuable by-product of the sugar making process holds a key place in the energy security needs of the country. India is an agri economy and even though production of ethanol from grains is picking up, food security needs puts the onus of fuel ethanol production squarely on the back of molasses processing.
India is the fourth largest producer of ethanol in the world and the second largest producer in Asia after China. The country produces around 460 million gallons of ethanol annually contributing approximately 4% to the world total production. Though India produces such large quantities of ethanol, still it has the capacity to produce even larger quantities of around 713 million gallons per year. That is why it can be said that the utilization rate in the country is usually low.
There are only 10 ethanol plants that exist in India and 20 more ethanol plants are proposed to be constructed in the near future to cope up with the increasing demand. Most of the plants are located in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra & Tamil Nadu.
In the last sugar year season, with the production of sugar crossing 27 million tons, molasses production has crossed 12 million tons, enough to process and produce almost 2.75 billion liters of ethanol. Molasses to ethanol is fermentation based typical process which has a great potential for the intervention of biotechnology for improvement in process efficiencies.