Earthworm Excreta: A Helping Hand for the Production of Fuel Ethanol

Today it is necessary to emphasize that Wastes are sources of pollution and therefore, their management and effective utilization is a must. In sugar industries bagasse is a major industrial waste which is reused for generation of steam. But large amount of surplus bagasse is available which poses serious problems to sugar industry if unutilized. It creates fire hazards and storage problems. Another sugar industry by product is press mud which is also a very good, rich material. The output of press mud occupies 4 % of the total sugarcane crushed. Approximately, it works out to 100 tons per day for a 2500 TCD factory. Therefore, it is an ideal and beneficial no-loss situation if bagasses and press mud can be utilized productively and profitably. To meet these twin problems of fuel oil scarcity and air pollution caused by the growing use of petroleum fuels, alternate renewable clean burning fuels should be explored for use in motor vehicles. Most prominent eco-friendly fuel candidates are the bio-solar fuels (ethanol), natural gas and hydrogen. Amongst these, the most suitable for a developing agricultural country like India is ethanol. We used Earthworm Excreta for the Production of Ethanol from the deteriorated sugar. The result obtained shows that the earthworm excreta is fully capable in producing significant amount of ethanol.