Recycling of rotten rice stock to produce ethanol in Thailand

21/08/2014

Thailand government has taken a step to reuse the rotten rice founded under the inspection by millitary cops under rice pledging scheme to avoid the cost loss due to the Rice Pledging Scheme, started by the previous Thailand government.

Senior government official said that they have taken this step in order to reuse the the high cost paid for buying the rice at high prices from farmers at higher-than-market rates in the scheme that started in October 2011 and ran through February this year.

The government is estimated to have lost as much as 400 billion baht (RM39.8 billion) in buying and storing 18 million tonnes of rice.

After completing the inspection nationwide the government has founded about 20% of total rice founded either of inferior quality or was damaged said by Rangsan Sriworasart, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Finance and a member of the rice inspection committee.

Ethanol is a bio fuel used for commercial purposes as well as domestic purpose in the country.But the ethanol producer are not appreciating this idea of the government for ethanol production due to several reasons mentioned below:

Expensive

Based on higher-than-market-prices the government paid farmers at 15,000 baht a tonne, the cost of ethanol from rotten rice would be about 48 baht per litre, according to Siriwut Siempakdi, former president of the Thai Ethanol Manufacturing Association.That is about twice the price of ethanol made from cassava and molasses and the consumers of the ethanol founded no logic to use such a costly bio fuel.

Extra Infrastructure Cost

Surong Bulakul, chief operating officer for infrastructure at Thailand’s PTT Plc, Thailand’s top energy firm and also the biggest ethanol consumer said that this plan is in feasibility stage and new to polished more to come into practice so that it can overcome the limitation it is having right now. Siriwut Siempakdi, said that factories that produce ethanol from molasses use machines that cannot process rice.So the ethanol producers need government support to shift their infrastructure that can process rice also.

Also the demand for the consumption of ethanol is definitely going to increase in the coming days and it may not be possible for the rice to fulfill this demand.

According to the data from the Thai Ethanol Manufacturing Association.Thailand has 20 ethanol factories, of which 14 use molasses as a raw material and six use cassava,

Overall ethanol production is at 3.9 million litres per day, while domestic consumption stood at 3.2 million litres per day, according to the association.

Riceoutlook.com

Recycling of rotten rice stock to produce ethanol in Thailand

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