http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1267007.cms
THE TIMES OF INDIA EDITORIAL Realising Gandhi's village ideal Anil K Rajvanshi, Ph.D. Director Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) Phaltan-Lonand Road, Tambmal, P.O.Box 44, Phaltan - 415523 Maharashtra, India Ph: 91-2166-222396 Fax: 91-2166-220945 E-mails: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://nariphaltan.virtualave.net http://www.nariphaltan.org October 19, 2005. This is the Age of Electricity. Yet, 55-60 per cent of rural India has no electricity; drinking water supply is poor and a majority of rural population uses 180 million tons of biomass every year as fuel for cooking using primitive, inefficient and smoky chulhas. Rural India hasn't really changed much since Mahatma Gandhi's time. Villages can easily get electrified if modern hi-technology synergises with locally available resources. Biomass is an abundantly available local resource, obtained from agricultural residues. The 600 million tons of agricultural residues India generates every year can theoretically produce 70,000 MW of electric power. A hi-tech biogas producer can generate biogas with energy of about 13 MJ per kg of biomass, which is similar to that produced by burning these residues in a power plant. Freshly harvested biomass contains about 50 per cent moisture. For using it in power plants or gasifiers one has to reduce the moisture content to about 10-15 per cent. Drying biomass requires energy. The freshly harvested biomass can be directly fed into biogas reactors to produce gas, saving considerable amount of energy and time. Besides, the slurry produces excellent fertiliser and soil conditioner. For a biogas economy to succeed, it needs efficient biogas producers. At present, biogas is produced inefficiently in fixed and floating dome systems, requiring considerable amount of cowdung and other nitrogenous material. It is not suitable for a household with less than three to four cattle. Then there are problems of gas production during winter and improper mixing of inputs like biomass, night soil and cowdung. Biogas reactors should be so designed that the production/unit of biomass inputs is maximised. This can be done by properly maintaining pH of the slurry, temperature and other biochemical indicators. Use of genetically engineered microbes can also increase gas production efficiency. A village-level microutility company can be set up in rural areas which will buy locally available raw materials like cowdung and biomass, and use them in these reactors for power generation and supply the gas for cooking and other purposes. Europe has an installed electric generating capacity of about 2,500 MW from biogas alone. Besides there are reports that cars and buses are running on compressed biogas. The raw gas, which is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, is scrubbed to remove carbon dioxide and the resulting methane is compressed for use in automotive applications. In Sweden, an experimental train is being run on compressed biogas. In India, extra biogas can be used for running modified autorickshaws and two-wheelers. Biogas-powered diesel gensets can also produce clean drinking water as a by-product. The strategy of using locally available agricultural residues-based biogas gensets will produce electric power, excellent fertiliser and clean drinking water for the village. Besides the excess biogas can also be used to provide clean cooking fuel. A village-level utility company can set up a 500 kW biogas powered diesel genset which can supply enough electricity for an average village with a population of 2,000-3,000. The high temperature exhaust gases from these plants can distil or boil water via a suitably designed unit, which can be attached to the genset. A 500 kW power plant can produce about 100,000 litres of clean drinking water every day. In producing both electricity and clean water, the power plant efficiency will jump from the 35 per cent to around 65 per cent. The microutility company could own the plant, whose shares in turn could be owned by villagers, and be managed professionally, without the political pitfalls of a cooperative society. The microutility could also lease village-level transmission lines and infrastructure from the local State Electricity Boards (SEBs) at a social cost, based on the cost of electricity most SEBs charge farmers. A national biogas technology mission should be set up to help research institutes do R&D for hi-tech biogas reactors, provide soft loans for entrepreneurs to set up such microutilities and to encourage government, corporate sector and NGO partnership in this area. The writer is director, Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute, Maharashtra . _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
