From food to fossil fuel-Guar bean's long journey!

India is the top most guar bean producing country and this humble seed is a vital source of a variety of gum used extensively by the food industry for viscosity and texture modification properties. There are also other edible gum sources from plants but guar gum is preferred for its extraordinary properties liked by the food processing industries world over. Besides there are gum like materials derived by modification of starch which also find application in some products. Guar gum became "famous" after the fossil fuel industry found that it is essential for extracting underground fossil fuel products through the process of fracking which has made America self sufficient in its energy requirement. This diversion has made guar gum more and more expensive and in spite of the fracking industry trying its best to find effective substitutes to it, not much success has been achieved so far.

The guar price which peaked at one time to about $15 per kg has crashed to a more sedate figure of  about $ 2 per kg at present. What future guar gum will have is some what uncertain as furious efforts are on hand to develop universally acceptable fracking fluid sans guar gum in the US. Also efforts are on to cultivate guar in Texas region in the US though the production there is still minuscule and the fracking industry still looks to India for bulk of its supply. Guar gum has become so dear to the oil industry there that many leading players are stocking the same to avoid escalation of prices in the international market in the near future. The pull from other industries like textiles, paper, explosives, mineral ore processing, food processing, pharmaceutical manufacturing etc also is a contributing factor to the escalating demand for guar gum. Guar gum and its modified version Partially Hydrogenated Guar Gum (PHGG) have properties such as solubility, stability under acidic conditions and heat that make it a choice for many of these industries.

Though Jodhpur in Rajasthan is closely associated with guar gum industry as large number of processing plants are located nearby, Kutch region in Gujarat account for more than 70% of country's production. The country produces about 3 million tons of guar beans and out of 1 million tons gum derived from it 90% is exported for use mostly for hydraulic cracking to extract gases from the shale underground. Almost 70% of the international demand comes from oil and gas industry. Imagine the gas industry in the US needs guar beans harvested from one thousand acres in India to dig a well and what efforts go for achieving this production at the farm level. A valid and relevant question that does not get a satisfactory answer is how far the farmers are benefited by this gas industry boom in the US? Like all other agricultural commodities guar beans also are susceptible to manipulations by middle men who invariably gorge a major part of the sale proceeds with no one able to control their activities. Probably the growers must be getting only a fraction of the money involved in guar beans trade!

The recent crashing of petroleum prices has added to the worries of the growers in India because an oil production cut is a distinct possibility which in turn may affect demand very significantly. Whether fracking industry will also resort to production cuts is some thing which cannot be predicted as of now. In the long run, guar beans growers will have to be weary about their future and if alternate crops can be raised in their lands that could be a better alternative option. Such a trend is seen when erstwhile guar farmers are shifting to cotton, sesame and cumin in large numbers due to steep fall in demand and their income from this crop. Food industry which uses guar gum for many functional applications like baked goods, ice cream, dairy products, fried foods, emulsification, antistaling etc probably may shift to guar gum  and partially hydrogenated gum (PHGG) as the current prices are considered reasonable. Also produced are Hydroxy Propyl Guar (HPG), Carboxymethyl Hydroxy Propyl Guar (CMHPG), metal complexes with Boron, Titanium, Aluminum, Antimony, Zirconium and Chromium all of which have properties suitable for different industrial applications. Besides the health connotations associated with guar may raise its stature further as it is considered a dietary fiber source and many health foods are right candidates for its wide scale use. While guar gum as available in nature is fermented to the extent of 75% in the gut, PHGG is 100% fermentable producing desirable volatile free fatty acids. They are regarded as pre-biotics because of their action in the intestine.  

There is also another face to the guar gum industry which many do not know. A casual visit to the so called guar mills can expose the indifferent and unhealthy working environment where thousands are employed at wages not considered comparable to other industrial workers. What is appalling is the "dusty" environment within the mill resulting from the inefficient machinery used by the owners spewing out fine particles of gummy cotyledon which are inhaled by the workers causing serious lung disorders. There does not appear to be too much concerns on the part of the government to protect their health through strict control measures. We only see the glamorous side of the industry which boasts of bringing in sizeable foreign exchange to the national kitty!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE "GREEN" BOTTLE-IS IT A MIRAGE?

Fast dwindling fossil fuel reserves make it imperative that their consumption is progressively brought down all over the world and renewable sources of energy are discovered on a a priority consideration. Solar energy, Wind energy, Wave energy, Geothermal energy etc have shown enough promises but requires higher investment and efforts to get translated into commercially viable technologies for mass adoption. Ultimately the cost consideration far outweighs any technological challenge since scientists have enough foundation to come out with technically feasible ideas. So far many of the renewable energy production has been sustained by supportive fiscal policies of many governments but if these alternative options are to be a permanent feature, generation cost and capital cost intensity will have to come down drastically.

Food packaging, intended to give protection to the food inside, has been depending on glass bottles and sanitary cans till about 4-5 decades ago. But there has been a paradigm shift in the packaging industry practices since then with more emphasis on plastics of different types. There are at least a dozen fundamental plastics, most of them polymers, made from petroleum chemicals and with various combinations they provide almost 90% of the packaging resources to the food and pharmaceutical industry. It has not been easy for the packaging industry to win approval of the plastics for packing foods because of the fear of migration of unsafe chemicals that may leach into the food during processing and storage. Well laid down protocols of safety and standard testing practices have made it  possible to get many plastic materials safety cleared during the last two decades.

If plastics are safe and universally acceptable to one and all, plastic industry should have been the happiest lot but one factor that weighs heavily against plastics is their indestructibility and lack of biodegradability. It takes almost 800 years for most plastics to get degraded and even when they are degraded the artifacts produced tend to pollute the environment inviting the wrath of the "Green Movement". Besides recycled plastics do not appear to have all the original functional properties characteristic of the virgin material. Due to innovative policy orchestrations at the level of the governments in many countries, use of plastics is increasingly being frowned upon mainly because of their pollution potential and use of ultra thin films with 20 microns or less are banned in many places. Many shopping malls are charging extra for providing carry bags made from plastics, forcing many consumers to take their own bags for shopping. Of all the plastic materials used by the food and beverage industry Poly (ethylene Terephthalate) commonly known as PET is most conspicuous by its extensive use for manufacture of bottles for soft drinks and bottled water.

PET is a polymer of ethyleneterephthalate monomer and its transparency, physical strength and amenability to easy fabrication, make it eminently suited for bottling operations. Especially its low oxygen permeability allows the content inside immune to oxidative spoilage and consequent quality deterioration. To day almost all soft drinks manufactured in the world are packed in PET bottles. More than 60% of the world production of PET resins is absorbed by the fiber industry for the manufacture of textile yarns while about 30% goes to the bottling industry. As this is derived from petroleum chemicals and their biodegradability credentials are poor, the soft drink industry is strenuously striving to replace these bottles with more sustainable materials. It is true PET bottles do undergo recycling, most of the recycled material going to the carpet industry and some for recycled bottles but still the industry is not happy with its dependence on fossil fuel.     

Beverage bottles, made from PET has two main components. MEG (Mono Ethylene Glycol) makes up about 30 percent of a bottle's weight and it has been possible to make the same from plant sources, especially sugarcane, grown abundantly in Brazil, India and other countries. The other component, called PTA (Purified Tere Phthalic Acid), makes up 70 percent of a bottle's weight. Though scientists have been able to make PTA from plant materials at laboratory level, manufacture on an industrial scale has posed severe challenges. According to recent reports production capacity for MEG is slated to increase dramatically and from one plant producing it to day, there are others getting ready to take up production soon. The environmental groups agitating against plastics are extending massive public support for creating plastics from plant sources as they generate smaller amounts of greenhouse gases, compared to plastics made from petroleum.

A larger issue is whether the world can afford to divert an edible source of food like sugarcane for non-edible packaging materials. Probably a more appropriate approach would be to develop technology for using agricultural waste products, like corn stalks or other materials left over from farming, as feed material for producing plastics. Growing crops for plastic can also cause a lot of land diversion which in turn may affect the price of food to a significant extent. Though some of the beverage giants have declared their intent to use agricultural waste products, such as corn husks, pine bark or orange peels etc, to make its plastic bottles, how far and how long it will take is any body's guess. Regardless of how they are produced, plant based plastics can still create litter and solid waste problems posing another challenge. it is time appropriate legislation is considered for forcing the industry to finance recycling operations and facilitate more increased plastic recycling without creating environmental problems and save water and energy use as much as possible. Considering all these uncertainties, a 100% "green" bottle remains a mirage though in future one cannot rule out dramatic breakthrough in this area.


V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

BIO-FUELS: ARE THEY REALLY SUSTAINABLE?

Lot has been written about the promise of bio-fuels which are considered sustainable as compared to the non-renewable fossil fuels. Food technologists have profound interest in this area due to two reasons. First as a citizen there is grave concern regarding the deteriorating climatic changes attending relentless burning of fossil fuels and global warming that is changing the very face of this planet. Then comes the critical shortages experienced in the edible oil availability as there is a growing tendency, especially in many developed countries to divert edible oils for automobiles. In India almost 40% of vegetable oil requirements are met out of imports and any fluctuations in global prices of oils, especially Palm oil is bound to have serious repercussions on its economy.

Bio-fuel can be in solid, liquid or gaseous form derived from relatively recently dead biological materials and it can be produced from any carbon sources, most common being photosynthetic plants which fix solar light and atmospheric carbon dioxide to make carbohydrates in abundance. Two strategies which can help in bio-fuel production are: (a) conversion of carbohydrates and sugars into alcohol for use singly or in combination with fossil fuel and (b) use of plant oils which are triglycerides. According to the National Bio-fuel Policy of GOI (NBFP), announced on September 11, 2008 the current E5 fuel (5% ethanol) regime will move to E10 regime by 2012 and then to E20 regime by 2017. Bio-diesel fuel will be mostly from plants like Jatropa to be taken up in waste lands and marginal lands across the country through long term leasing arrangements. Minimum Support Price also is expected to be worked out to stimulate growing of these plants.

As the country is facing a sugar glut, sugar cane juice conversion to alcohol is likely to be encouraged so as to reduce the stock by 2 million tons. As a short measure alcohol import from Brazil is also on the horizon. Many of the sugar factories already have facilities to ferment molasses into ethanol and no extra investment will be required for augmenting the production. Probably sugar being a politically sensitive commodity, GOI is treading a cautious path as far as this route to fuel self sufficiency is concerned because of the apparent nexus between the sugar business and the political landscape that prevail in the country. Besides sugarcane is a water intensive crops precluding its cultivation on more lands. There are other carbon sources which can be converted into ethanol, the most abundant being cellulosic materials which have no food value for human beings. But they also have other uses like feeding the livestock and burning for generating heat for day to day life. Bagasse is already being used for co-generation in many sugar mills and as such it is not a material of preferred choice. Conversion of Corn or Tapioca into glucose through amylase/mineral acid technology does not lend itself to any massive operations because of their prevailing uses as food and industrial source of starch.

Use of plant oils, some of which also are consumed as a source of biological energy in human diets, is fraught with some grave consequences. India consumes about 15 million tons of plant oils for food and non-food purposes. Any diversion is bound to tell on the edible oil prices which will create further imbalances in availability of this crucial diet constituent. Thus oils from Oil Palm, Soybean, Sesame, Mustard etc rule themselves out on this account. Other sources such as jatropa, pongamia, algae etc may be of some promise but how far their supply line can be assured is a million dollar question. The NBFP document does mention about these non edible oil sources and offers some incentives for farmers to raise these crops in government lands, guaranteeing minimum support prices but there is no definite road map as to achieving any significant targets that will reduce our fossil fuel imports substantially. IT is time that GOI approaches this issue in a holistic way by revisiting out agricultural policy to integrate food and fuel needs of the nation on a long term basis instead of treating bio-fuels separately. Prima facie bio-fuels from non-edible sources of oil looks as most promising sustainable source of energy, not the gasohol project. Large scale cultivation of these plants will also help controlling CO2 build up to some extent.

With the crude oil imports crossing 120 million tons in 2007-08 and the domestic production stagnating at 32 million tons, there is a sense of urgency in finding a long term solution to the energy crunch that is facing the country. The market situation is such that 80% of the fossil fuel is processed into diesel which is used extensively for transportation and power generation. Under these circumstances will the NBFP, as being enunciated, really help to save the situation in the foreseeable future. Unlikely.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/