Establishment and maintenance of decentralized sweet sorghum crushing-cumsyrup making unit.

In the light of environmental concerns associated with fossil fuel use and the increased demand for energy in different counties, bio-fuels research and development has come to center stage. Sweet sorghum is a SMART crop with triple product benefit - food, feed and fuel. It is a good candidate for commercial ethanol production with potential opportunities for benefiting the dryland farmers from the emerging bio-fuel markets. The commercial ethanol production from sweet sorghum requires feedstock supplies for longer periods in a year. ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Crops) and DSR (Directorate of Sorghum Research, Rajendranagar, AP, India) and other partners are working on supply chain management and addressing other issues in the sweet sorghum ethanol value chain. Principally, sweet sorghum supply chain involves centralized and decentralized models. Under centralized model farmers supply the sweet sorghum stalks directly to the distillery where as in decentralized model farmers supply stalks to Decentralized Crushing-Syrup Making Unit (DCU) located in the village it self. These stalks are crushed at the DCU and the sweet juice is boiled to produce concentrated syrup that can be stored for more than 9 months and used for ethanol production, particularly in the off-season augmenting the feedstock supply to the distillery. Use of DCU for crushing and syrup production at village is a new idea and there is no publication available on the requirements for establishment of a DCU and its maintenance. In this bulletin, attempts have been made to briefly describe the experiences of ICRISAT and partners in establishment and maintenance of DCU covering all the aspects of DCU, from selection of site for its establishment, logistical requirements, plant and machinery, operation and maintenance of DCU and its role in sweet sorghum supply chain management