Chempolis Ltd., a Finland-based biorefining technology corporation, has entered into partnership with Avantha Group’s research wing Avantha Centre for Industrial Research & Development to offer technology to India to extract ethanol from various agricultural residues for blending with petrol.

India is a leading agricultural country producing large amounts of bagasse, cane trash, rice and wheat straw whose disposal is an environmental problem. The partnership will help to deliver biorefining technology to India to convert various agriculture residues, such as bagasse, cane trash, rice and wheat straw, corn stems, grasses, bamboo to clean sugars to be further converted to cellulosic ethanol and other biobased chemicals.

“Currently only a small percentage of ethanol blending ratio is reached due to lack of traditional raw materials and proper technologies. This partnership can help India achieve 10 percent ethanol blending levels in petrol and 20 percent blending ratio by 2017,” said Rajeev Vederah, chairman of ACIRD.

Speaking on the partnership, Pasi Rousu, president (Asia Pacific and Americas) of Chempolis, said, “India is today facing many challenges like air pollution, tremendous import of petroleum, underdeveloped countryside etc. All these challenges can be turned into highly scalable sustainable, (economic, environment and social) businesses.”

Chempolis and ACIRD partnership can help India to achieve its goals of reducing forex spending on importing of oil, production of more sustainable carbon neutral biofuels and chemicals while reaching ethanol blending targets and promoting sustainable and environment-friendly business models.