Major Achievements

The Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai, has developed India’s first home grown technology to convert biomass to ethanol with speed and efficiency. The technology, which converts agricultural waste into ethyl alcohol, or bio-ethanol, is superior to other prevalent technologies as the rate of conversion is four times faster than those available in the international market. While the time taken to convert biomass to biofuel is about 4 to 7 days with prevalent technologies, the one developed by the team at DBT-ICT does the same in about 18-20 hours, and produces about 300 litres of ethanol per ton of biomass. The produce can be blended with petrol to be used in vehicles as fuel. The country’s first second-generation (2G) Ethanol plant was inaugurated by the Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences at Kashipur in Uttarakhand. Subsequently, the technology was transferred to Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) to build commercial scale biomass ethanol plants based on the technology. The plants, one at Bina in MP and another at Bathinda in Punjab, are scheduled to be operational by 2018. The DBT-ICT Centre, Mumbai has also developed the Rapid-Anaerobic Digestor technology, which can handle any bio-waste (including agri-waste) -- dry or wet -- and generate biogas within 24 hours. The technology gives a methane yield of greater than 90% and generates zero waste. It is now being scaled up to 2 demonstration /commercial plants