Officials of Chempolis Oy and Numaligarh Refinery Limited sign the agreement on Thursday. Picture by UB Photos

Guwahati, Sept. 11: Numaligarh Refinery Limited is diversifying into the ethanol sector and has signed a memorandum of understanding with a Finland-based company — Chempolis Oy, for carrying out a feasibility study for production of ethanol from bamboo biomass.

Both NRL and Chempolis shall jointly undertake an assessment study to ascertain the availability of ethanol in the region and co-ordinate with various government/private agencies to identify the main feedstock supply areas.

Bamboo is one of the major non-food biomass resources available abundantly in the Northeast and is among the fastest growing plants. Chempolis Oy is a Finland-registered company and has developed the patented formicobio™ technology for processing non-food raw materials into cellulosic ethanol, cellulosic sugars, bio-chemicals and bio-coal.

A communiqué issued by NRL said the companies would explore tie-ups with prospective suppliers for supplying the feedstock for the proposed plant. Chempolis will also carry out experimental testing of various specimens of bamboo and other potential biomass feedstock materials available and provide the entire pre-project technical consultancy required for completion of the detailed feasibility study for the project.

The memorandum was signed between director (technical), NRL, S.R. Medhi and president, Asia-Pacific and America, Chempolis, Pasi Rousu, in the presence of NRL managing director Padmanabhan, director (finance) NRL, S.K. Barua, president, Chempolis India, Navin Singhania and senior officials of the NRL here today.

Both sides have agreed to cooperate with each other in carrying out the feasibility study and implement the project, if found feasible and on mutually acceptable terms and conditions through a joint venture subject to environmental clearance from the ministry of environment and forest and other statutory clearances.

The national policy on bio-fuels announced by the Union ministry of new and renewable energy in 2009 set an indicative target of 20 per cent blending of bio-fuels, both for bio-diesel in high speed diesel and bio-ethanol in motor spirit, by 2017. The approach of the national policy on bio-fuels is to promote generation of bio-fuels solely from non-food feedstock to be raised on degraded or wastelands that are not suited to agriculture, to avoid a possible conflict of fuel with food security.

The communiqué said the company intends to explore the feasibility of setting up a bio-refinery in Assam to produce bio-ethanol using non-food bio-mass resources like bamboo.