Praj Industries, who has been working on developing second generation technologies for the production of biofuels, is scaling up its demonstration research and development plant program, “Lignocellulose to Ethanol”. For the past four years, the company has been operating a pilot plant to produce ethanol from feedstocks such as bagasse, corn stover and more and is now ready to move closer to commercial scale production.

“The successful demonstration of various parameters at the demo-commercial plant will put Praj at the forefront of the biobased economy and in the race for commercial scale second generation biofuels,” said Pramod Chaudhari, Praj’s Executive Chairman during a welcome address at the recent FO Licht, World Ethanol Conference at Munich. “While this plant size is appropriate for emerging markets, with our past experience of quick scale up, it will be well within Praj’s capability to scale the capacity even up to 10 times. I am pleased to say that Praj will be the first Company in the tropics to set up such an integrated facility.”

Praj is taking steps to set up a 10 million litre demonstration commercial plant in India. This plant will seek to demonstrate technical and commercial viability as well optimization of water and energy integration and develop other areas of the value chain including feed products. To date, the company’s engineering package is ready for deployment and they are seeking investors and partners.

The demonstration plant is expected to be operational in early 2013 and cost around $25 to $30 million U.S. dollars to complete.