Future of Ethanol Plant Engineering

Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?

I am Dinesh Mahajan, and I hold a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from UICT, NMU Jalgaon University, where I graduated with First Class with Distinction.

I have more than 20 years of experience across various process industries. From my experience, my core expertise lies in ethanol distillery plants, particularly ethanol production from sugarcane, maize, broken rice, and other sugar- and starch-based feedstocks. Over the years, I have worked extensively on ethanol production processes and complete turnkey ethanol plant projects, from design and engineering to execution.

In addition to ethanol plants, we have expertise in starch plants, solvent distillation plants, chemical separation systems, evaporation processes, dryers, effluent treatment plants (ETPs), water treatment plants (WTPs), blending units, crude distillation plants, waste oil distillation plants, industrial equipment manufacturing, process automation solutions tailored to customer requirements, and ethyl acetate distillation plants.

Q2. The corn starch and derivatives sector is seeing a shift toward larger, centralized, highly automated operations. Does a mid-sized, manually controlled starch plant remain economically viable under current energy and water compliance costs, or is sector consolidation inevitable?

From my…