India backs first private 2G ethanol biorefinery at Wave Sugar site

Spray Engineering Devices Limited won 150 crore in government financial assistance to build a 91 KLPD second-generation ethanol biorefinery at Wave Sugar’s Dhanaura site in Uttar Pradesh, pushing India’s advanced biofuels program toward a private commercial-scale plant. The project will pair biomass gasification with advanced gas fermentation, a setup aimed at turning agricultural residue into ethanol and, later, green chemicals.

The approval came through the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas’s PM JI-VAN Yojana, routed via the Centre for High Technology, and places SED among the first private developers in India to move a commercial 2G ethanol project into execution. SED says the plant will be built inside Wave Industries’ Dhanaura sugar complex, where the company already runs a 150 KLPD distillery based on B-heavy molasses and started commercial production in March 2022.

That existing industrial base gives the project a feedstock and logistics backbone that many advanced-biofuel proposals lack. Wave says the Dhanaura unit, acquired in 1997, covers 28.5 hectares and is linked to more than 32,000 hectares of cane cultivation, 55,000 farmers and 350 villages. The new biorefinery is expected to sit alongside that cane platform while targeting non-food biomass, a shift that lines up with the government’s push to reduce crop-residue burning and broaden ethanol supply beyond first-generation feedstocks.

India notified PM JI-VAN in March 2019 and later extended the implementation window to 2028-29 as it tried to build out lignocellulosic ethanol capacity. The government also pulled forward the national 20% blending target to Ethanol Supply Year 2025-26 from 2030, after the country reached 10% blending in June 2022 and 15% in 2024; Press Information Bureau data later put blending at 17.98% in FY25.

SED says it has more than 100 patented technologies and operates in more than 40 countries. Sukhraj Soni, SED’s director for biofuels and green chemicals, said the 91 KLPD biorefinery marks a significant advance for India’s biofuel landscape and will act as a flexible platform for renewable fuels and green chemicals.

The project also fits into a broader commercialization cycle that began with Indian Oil Corp. Ltd.’s Panipat biorefinery, inaugurated in 2022 and described as Asia’s first 2G ethanol plant. With state support, an operating sugar site and an established molasses distillery already in place, the Wave Sugar project will be watched as a test of whether India can move from plant approvals to dependable residue supply and steady output.