Pune, April 21

Praj Industries Ltd, a bioprocesses and engineering firm, has inaugurated its research and development centre, Matrix, at Pirangut in Pune. The facility is spread over five acres and is being developed over two phases, Mr Pramod Chaudhari, Chief Executive Officer, Praj Industries, said here on Monday.

Talking to presspersons, he said about Rs 30 crore has been invested in the first phase and another Rs 30 crore would be utilised in the second phase, which would be completed by September this year. The first phase has 12 laboratories, seven clean room facilities, cellulose to ethanol and biodiesel pilot plant. It also houses a brewery laboratory as per European brewing convention standards.

Mr Pramod said Praj has created a process development for high-energy ethanol blends. He noted that for long, detractors of ethanol had been claiming that ethanol did not have the equivalent energy content as gasoline. The innovation centre, he said, has achieved a breakthrough in developing the high-energy ethanol mixture having 30 per cent more energy content, which could be directly blended with gasoline.

He noted that this has been done by developing a special micro-organism which converted simple sugars into high energy ethanol mixture. He said it is successful at the laboratory stage and plans were to work out with oil marketing companies for commercialisation of the product blend.

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