Biogas Plant in Balcony, Indian Man Slashes LPG Bill by Half! and More!

Recently we wrote a report about the state of anaerobic digestion plant and biogas development in India. We noted that at national government level there was very little indication of any top-level awareness of the great potential for the betterment in India, available from biogas technology.

We said that this was disappointing because once India led in biogas. The was a growing number of small rural biogas plants and its production was having many spin-off advantages.

The same is not true in some parts of India where a number of people are developing their own biogas plant systems and helping those around them to join in with the advantages of anaerobic digestion. This, we think you will agree is amply demonstrated in the following article extracts:

1 - Jharkhand Man Installs Biogas Plant in Balcony, Slashes LPG Bill by Half!

Able to serve a family for four years, the entire portable structure cost him less than Rs 10,000 and took a few hours to assemble. No wonder he is the talk of his neighbourhood now!

Almost 160 years ago, the first successful biogas generation plant was established in Mumbai, India. Since then, approximately five million biogas plants cater to domestic needs like water heating and cooking.

Contrary to this, various countries, especially Germany, have been efficiently harnessing its benefits in other sectors.

“Having been the forerunners, we should have led ahead of all in ushering the biogas revolution, not the European countries like Germany, that have become forerunners of biogas utilisation, both in domestic and public spheres,” said a senior corporate executive, while speaking to The Better India.

Based in Jamshedpur, this executive, Gaurav Anand, has led the movement by becoming the first man in the steel city to build a biogas plant small enough to fit into his apartment’s balcony!

Photo Source: Tatasphere

Not only has it slashed his monthly expenditure on LPG, but has also rewarded him with rich slurry compost that makes his garden bloom.  via Jharkha

2 - Patna Girl Builds Biogas Plants, Provides Electricity to Poor Farmers!

City born and bred she may be, yet Akansha Singh was aware of the economic and social inequalities that exist within India. But it wasn’t until she got to the ground and observed first-hand did she realise the scale of the issue.

After completing her Masters in Social Entrepreneurship from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2014, Akansha had set out to Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh as part of an internship.

She was 24 at the time.

“That was a devastating eye-opener for me. The two weeks that I was there, I observed no households had toilets neither did they have any proper power supply. Which meant, the women had to cook food before nightfall as their farmer husbands finished their farming activities by that time. One thing that had particularly affected me was that these families consumed their meals cold because they had to finish preparing dinner while there was still natural light,” says Akansha to The Better India.

During this period, she noticed many social and environmental issues in the region. The women were still cooking using cow dung cakes, and the entire family was inhaling hazardous smoke regularly.

Finally, after months of convincing and explaining to them the many benefits of the project, the villagers yielded, and Akansha began looking for land to build the plant.

“Fortunately, a person from another community volunteered and donated a patch of land for the project. It is remarkable as caste system is much prevalent in the region, but this kind individual wanted the underprivileged community to lead better and empowered lives. From there, our journey started,” she says.

Today, they have two biogas plants in Samastipur; one with 2-hour bioelectricity capacity while the other supplies power for four hours.

Swayambhu received its initial funding from DBS Bank, Singapore. Her project was also aided partly by the beneficiaries and mostly by both government and non-government agencies.

“There has been a visible change in these areas. After seeing how electricity has brightened up their lives, the beneficiaries have become truly committed to the cause and pay charges without fail. Also, ever since they have ditched chemical pesticides and fertilisers for the organic manure from the plant, they have been saving a considerable amount of money as well as observed better yield. Our solution has impacted in multiple folds,” 

Akansha adds.

In addition to community biogas plants, they have also worked on individual plants for bioelectricity, including one in collaboration with students of IIT Patna.

Completion of a biogas plant.

via Electricity to Poor Farmers!

A Biogas Startup By An IIT-Bombay Alumnus Aims To Fight Air Pollution And Manage Waste

New Delhi: 34-year-old Priyadarshan Sahasrabuddhe, a Pune based engineer is trying to provide a solution for two of the biggest environmental problems facing India – air pollution and burgeoning waste pile ups. 

The IIT-Bombay alumnus has launched a technology to produce cooking gas fuel by repurposing the organic-waste produced in the kitchen and at the same time reducing the dependence on fossil fuels. In 2017 he created ‘Vaayu’, a biofuel plant that can be easily installed at homes to convert carbohydrates from organic waste into methane gas which can be used for cooking and heating purposes.

“I was working at my parent’s firm about two years ago and I noticed that every day after lunch, a lot of leftover food used to end up in the garbage bins. Watching all that food go waste, I thought of trying composting to manage that waste. But it was not enough. On researching more, I came to know about biofuels. I found that not only will it help in managing organic waste, it will also help in reducing our dependence on non-renewable sources like LPG,” 

said Mr. Sahasrabuddhe.

Also Read: Mumbai Civic Body Produces Cooking Gas From Waste For Its Canteen In N-Ward

“Waste segregation is the key here. Initially, when I started advocating for green living, I used to go to each house in my locality every morning to ask them to segregate their waste. There were days when I myself used to pick organic waste from the nearby garbage dumps. But gradually when my neighbours started to understand ‘Vaayu’, they started segregating and I get almost 8- 10 kgs of organic waste at my doorstep every day,” 

said the engineer turned innovator.

After a long period of testing of the device at his home and reducing his dependence on LPG to a significant extent, Mr. Sahasrabuddhe pushed others in his family, neighbours, and friends to start using this innovation. Till date his startup has done 135 installations in Pune, Sangli, Aurangabad, Umarkhed (District Yavatmal), Palghar, Nashik and Hyderabad. These installations together are managing up to two tons of food waste per day and saving about 900 LPG cylinders worth fuel per year.

How Does ‘Vaayu’ Work?

‘Vaayu’ is a domestic bio-gas machine which can be installed in the house, in the gallery, on the terrace or in the garden. The apparatus is fuelled by the waste generated in the kitchen which gets broken down by bacterial action known as Anaerobic Bacterial Digestion. Through this process, the carbon dioxide captured inside the organic waste during photosynthesis is divided into methane gas and liquid. The gas is stored in the balloon kind of a structure called the cylinder which is connected to the stovepipe. The cooking experience is exactly the same as that of a regular LPG or piped CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). The slurry generated in this process is high on nutrients and can be utilised as manure for the plants in the house.

The regular size ‘Vaayu’ has a container of two kg capacity in which the organic waste is put. A single two kg container, ‘Vaayu’ produces 200 litres of biogas within 24 hours which is 40 minutes of cooking gas per day saving up to three LPG cylinders per year. The capacity of the device can be increased by adding the containers.

The device requires cleaning up once in six months. The solid undigested material removed is fibrous and can be taken back to the garden as manure. Currently, the cost of installing ‘Vaayu’ is Rs. 20,000 but the operating cost is zero. There is no need of power to run ‘Vaayu’ as it operates on its own. Mr. Sahasrabuddhe is still working to improve the technology to make if more affordable.

Mr. Sahasrabuddhe has also started an informal community of like-minded nature enthusiasts who come up with innovative solutions and want to share them with others. The community, ‘Vaayu Mitra’, provides biofuel solutions according to the number of people residing in a house and encourage them to adopt a greener lifestyle. He says,

In my society, everyone segregates their own waste now. I and my friends are working also with waste collectors and are training them to operate biogas plants so that they become energy suppliers too. This increased value will help them earn better remuneration. via Waste Warriors

If you know of any further examples like these in India, please provide details by leaving a comment.

Biomass, Biofuels and Biogas

In recent years there has been a lot of interest in renewable and alternative energy sources. This has seemingly become an even bigger issue in the wake of the Japanese nuclear crisis, where the nuclear plant at Fukushima was damaged by the earthquake and resultant tsunami on March 11th. There is now a real danger that harmful radiation could escape from the site. People have always been uncertain of the safety of utilising nuclear power and such a scare only serves to heighten their concerns. That is why increasingly people are looking for alternatives. One such alternative is the use of biofuels.

What are Biofuels?

The term 'biofuel' refers to a broad range of fuels that are created from 'biomass' (see below). Biofuels are often used as an additive rather than as a 'pure' fuel. Bioethanol is an example of this. It is an alcohol created by fermenting the sugar components of plant materials and whilst ethanol can be used as a fuel for cars in its purest form, it is normally added to petrol to improve the emissions from the vehicle and increase octane.

Ok, so what is Biomass?

Biomass is a renewable energy source. It refers specifically to biomaterials from living organisms and recently living organisms - examples of which are wood, waste and alcohol fuels. There are actually several different sources of biomass energy, so in addition to the three just mentioned, there are: garbage and landfill gases. There are a few different mechanisms by which biomass can be converted to energy:

Thermal Conversion

This involves the use of heat in order to convert biomass into an alternative chemical form. There are different forms of thermal conversion - two examples of which are torrefaction and pyrolysis.

Chemical Conversion

This is quite simply where a range of chemical processes are used in order to convert biomass to alternative forms.

Biochemical Conversion

This involves harnessing the power of naturally occurring biochemical conversion processes. Microorganisms are used to break down biomass - Anaerobic Digestion is an example of this.

Biogas

Biogas is a type of biofuel that is produced by anaerobic digestion or fermentation of biodegradable materials, including biomass. Biodegradable waste can, for example, be converted to methane - which is a renewable energy source.

So are Biofuels the answer?

It remains to be seen whether or not biofuels are a long term solution to the problems surrounding the energy industry. There are certainly discussions to be had about the impact that the production of biofuels has on carbon emissions and biodiversity, but these are certainly not the only issues.

Projen Project Management Consultants are experts in Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas: http://www.projen.co.uk/

UK Energy Bill to Include Renewable Heat Incentive

The Energy Bill received its third reading in the House of Lords on 5 November 2008 and includes proposals from the Department for Energy and Climate Change for a scheme to incentivise investment in renewable heat. Currently, energy used for heating accounts for just under half of all the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions, while only 0.6% of heat generated in the UK is derived from renewable sources.

The Government has been considering for some time how to reduce heat-related emissions and boost heat generation from renewable sources. Earlier this year, the Government issued a Call for Evidence on Heat (see our related Law-Now) and sought views on introducing a financial incentive to encourage heat from renewable sources in Chapter 4 of its consultation on the UK Renewable Energy Strategy (see Law-Now).

The amendments to the Energy Bill will enable a scheme to provide financial support to any supplier of renewable heat. Support may also be available to producers of biogas or biomethane or to producers of biofuel used for generating heat. The scheme will provide a welcome boost to renewable CHP (Combined Heat and Power) producers and the bio-waste industry, among others.

Key points to note are:

- There is flexibility to band the level of support according to the technology used for generating heat.
- Eligible renewable heat sources for the scheme are biomass, biofuels, fuel cells, water (including waves and tides), solar power, geothermal sources, heat from air, water or the ground and combined heat and power systems (using a renewable fuel only).
- There is no specified limit on the size of plant which will be eligible for support, as the scheme is intended to cover both domestic and industrial scale projects.
- The scheme will be financed by fossil fuel suppliers, perhaps through a levy which would be administrated by Ofgem.

The amendments to the Energy Bill do not contain information on when the scheme will come into force, but the government has acknowledged it would take at least 18 months to develop the details of the scheme and implement the necessary secondary legislation.

The Government’s consultation expected later in November as part of the development of its Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy is likely to provide a forum to develop the details of the scheme. In that consultation, the governement will consider the issue of heat in the round from a low carbon, renewable and CHP perspective, as well as links to energy efficiency, notes Hergen Haye, the Director for Heat Policy at DECC.

The Energy Bill now only requires the House of Commons to approve the Lords’ amendments before receiving royal assent.

Biofuels: Rising Food Prices Force United Kingdom Government Rethink

Biofuels were being seen as the sustainable answer to both global warming and a means to take the sting out of rising fuel prices.

However, a report to be published on Monday 6 July 2008, is expected to force the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to rethink his support for using crops to keep Britain's cars and lorries running.

Unexpectedly rapidly rising world food prices look set to force Gordon Brown to take U-turn over the use of crops such as corn, rapeseed, palm and soya to produce fuel as an alternative to petrol and diesel.

A second and related report will also, the Independent Newspaper believes, force the UK government to revise its policies on food and the environment inevitably opening Mr Brown to the charge from environmental groups that he will be going soft on the Government's green agenda.

In the first report the Prime Minister will be been warned in a report by Professor Ed Gallagher, head of the Renewable Fuels Agency, that the rush for bio-fuels has made a "significant" contribution to the soaring cost of food on the global markets. Corn ethanol and biodiesel derived from vegetable oil were being widely being seen as important ways of creating fuel and combating carbon emissions which contribute to global warming, until these recent food cost increases.

Substantially increased use of biofuel was an important plank in Mr Brown's, and European environmental strategy. The UK government introduced targets in April in Britain requiring all petrol and diesel to contain 2.5 per cent of bio-fuels with the intention of doubling it to 5 per cent by 2010.

The policy has also been further developed in Europe where the EU has been debating a 10 per cent target by 2020. Professor Gallagher's report will say the production of fuels from "biomass" - non-food crops - may be sustainable but it challenges the targets for producing fuel from other crops normally used for food.

Greenpeace said biofuels initially "looked good on paper" but the Gallagher review would conclude that the risks are too great to impose higher targets.

The campaign group has called for a moratorium on targets, subsidies and tax breaks for bio-fuel consumption until it was clear that these fuels could be produced from sustainable sources.

Oxfam said: "It is clear that any additional pressure on limited land resources has the potential to drive further agriculture clearance of forests or other habitats and to drive up food prices."

The vast majority of the European biodiesel was made from rapeseed oil, said Oxfam. "As we divert more and more rapeseed crop into fuel, European industry is buying increasing supplies of edible oils from overseas including palm oil.

A second report by the UK Cabinet Office strategy unit is intended to launch a debate over how Britain uses its land more effectively to produce more food.

Anaerobic Digestion News: Our view is that Anaerobic Digestion of waste biomass IS capable of producing sustainable biofuels which do combat climate change.