Value-added products from tender coconut husk

KOCHI: Tender coconut  water might be the best  health drink, but dispo- sing of the large volumes  of waste husk has been  a constant headache both  for the vendors as  well as for the autho- rities.Now plans are afoot to turn  the menace into a boon. The Central Institute of Coir Research has come out  with a set of technologies that would convert  husks into several value-added products, including compost, toys and coir pith.“The technology has already been demonstrated to the farmers and various  organisations like the Regional Agro Industrial Co-operative of Kerala (RAIDCO) and the Kerala Agro Industries Corporation Ltd (KAIC).  “We are now waiting for mass producers to bring the products in the market. The project was sanctioned by the Coconut Development Board. Unlike other parts of coconut, the husk could not be made use of in any  way.  The only way to dispose of the waste is to burn  it in large quantities and that has proved to be difficult,” said  Coconut Development Board Director  K Muralidharan. The first technology is for chopping the used tender coconut husk.  “We have evolved three machines for this, a manual chopper, a semi-automatic chopper and an automatic chopper.  “These will be used to slice the husk into small pieces. The chopped pieces will then be dried and made into bales. These can be sold in packets of about 50kg. They are already in use in European countries for horticulture purposes. It can also be used as land fills,”, said CCRI director U S Sharma. The other technology looks at pulverising the product and converting it into coir pith.  Coir pith, like the tender coconut husk has been a nuisance for coconut farmers and producers.  But today, after a technology was developed to make value-added products out of it,it is now being imported to the country.  “Once the husk is converted into coir pith we can make compost out of it,” said U S Sharma.   In the case of matured coconut husk the technology aims at converting the product into toys.  “These matured coconut husks have very weak fibres. Using fibre extraction machines these can be converted into various products like toys,” Sharma said.