The ethanol business

May 6, 2015, 12:00 pm 

We read that massive volumes of concentrated ethanol have been detected from time to time by Customs and Excise authorities. It is suspected that equally huge consignments have passed through undetected. Similarly, large detections of distilled Kasippu, related equipment and raw materials are made on a virtually daily basis.

For what lawful purposes is ethanol imported? The perfumery and pharmaceutical industries come to mind. However, their requirements are probably minuscule in comparison to the amounts evidently coming in. The attention should immediately shift to the chain of officials colluding in the required authorizations and supervision. They should be detected and duly punished. Industrial alcohol arrives at such strengths that a three or four-fold dilution will yield a mix as potable and potent as gin or whiskey. So lucrative is this illegal business.

The intoxicating ingredient in kasippu is also ethanol. While the alleged barbed wire, geckos and rats are not amenable to distillation, unfortunately the harmful methanol and urea are potential co-distillates.

All alcoholic beverages start as carbohydrates - wheat, barley, rice, sugar cane, dates, potato and so on. Considerable ingenuity enters into illicit alcohol production. We can turn this curse into an asset. There is a good case for revisiting archaic excise regulations that make alcohol production illicit. This was possibly introduced mainly for fiscal reasons - to collect excise duties. This was little different from making salt production from sea water illegal. Rather than endless efforts to raid illicit stills, it would be much more prudent to regularize this activity with proper controls and revenue collection procedures.

It is claimed by some that some kasippu is far more acceptable and innocuous than the official brews. In fact, some of the latter are blends

containing industrial ethanol. Ideally, legalised production should be accompanied by proper quality control to exclude harmful components such as methanol, aldehydes and other obnoxious impurities and a fair excise tax be levied. The latter could be plowed back into improving the production processes and enhancing supervision.

Experience has shown that enforced prohibition and unintelligent controls only lead to abuse. One may also remember that excess or non-potable rejections could still be diverted to "gasohol" as alternative or supplementary fuel. A basic fact is that in human history, fermentation probably pre-dated agriculture. This rich experience and basic productive enterprise need not and will never, disappear.

Dr U.Pethiyagoda.