ANDRITZ Equipment Powers World's First Bamboo-Based Fuel Ethanol Plant in India

Technology group ANDRITZ has supplied the raw material handling and preparation systems for the world's first facility that makes fuel-grade ethanol from bamboo biomass. The plant supports India's push to grow domestic bioethanol output and cut its reliance on imported crude oil.

The second-generation plant sits in Numaligarh, in Assam's Golaghat district. It is run by Assam Bio Ethanol Private Limited (ABEPL) and was inaugurated on September 14, 2025 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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Plant Capacity and Outputs

The facility is rated to produce 49,000 metric tonnes of ethanol a year. It also makes 19,000 tonnes of furfural, 11,000 tonnes of acetic acid, 32,000 tonnes of food-grade liquid CO₂ and 25.6 MW of green power.

ABEPL is a joint venture of Numaligarh Refinery Limited and two Finnish companies, Fortum and Chempolis. The ethanol is delivered to the parent refinery for blending with petrol.

What ANDRITZ Delivered

ANDRITZ supplied the key equipment for bamboo preparation, including chippers, screens, re-chippers, a screw reclaimer and conveyors. It also handled structural design, chip-storage silos, electrification and plant control systems. Its team supervised installation and commissioning.

Bamboo chips are cleaned, dried and stored in silos. Larger chips go through a re-chipper before moving to one of four digesters, where a formic and acetic acid mix at 165 °C turns the biomass into cellulose pulp. Enzymes then convert it to glucose, which is fermented into ethanol and purified.

Feedstock and Trial Results

At full capacity the plant needs about 500,000 metric tonnes of bamboo a year. Supply will come from purpose-built plantations and thousands of registered farmers and entrepreneurs in the region.

During the trial run, the plant produced fuel-grade ethanol with 99.7% purity. The project responds to India's blending policy, which began with a 5% ethanol target in 2018 and is now set at 20%.

A Closed-Loop Design

Lignin from the process is dried and burned in boilers to make power and steam. The 25.6 MW output exceeds what the process needs, so there is a proposal to send surplus electricity to the grid.

The plant also makes about 18 tonnes of potassium-rich ash a day. Cement, bricks and fertilizer are being considered as downstream uses.

Khagen Bora, project manager at ABEPL, said the plant should have a local impact beyond energy.

"As the site scales up it will become a big employer of local labour, improving the area both socially and economically."

Arun Chidambaram, project manager at ANDRITZ Feed and Biofuel, said the project reflects the company's biomass expertise.

"By delivering an end-to-end engineered solution, ANDRITZ has ensured operational excellence and reliability, reflecting its expertise in handling complex biomass processing systems."

About ANDRITZ

ANDRITZ is an international technology group serving industries including pulp and paper, metals, hydropower, environment and energy, and feed and biofuel.

Source: ANDRITZ, "State-of-the-art second-generation bioethanol facility relies on ANDRITZ for optimized feed materials"