BIO MASS AND BIOFUEL : FUTURE AS RENEWABLE ENERGY

Proc. Nat. Con. Cha. Bio. Res. Man.

ISBN 978-81-927762-0-0

BIO MASS AND BIOFUEL : FUTURE AS RENEWABLE ENERGY Rahul Podder, Tanima Das and Susanta Nath P.G.Department of Zoology, Bidhannagar College, EB-2, Sector-I Salt Lake, Kolkata- 700 064, West Bengal. Corresponding author : [email protected] ABSTRACT The world is getting modernized and industrialized day by day. As a result vehicle and engines are increasing but energy sources are decreasing gradually. Times comes for immediate introduction of renewable energy in all sector of human activities. India has a vast supply of renewable energy resources and it has one of the largest programs in the world for deploying renewable energy products and systems. In the past century, it has been seen that the consumption of non-renewable sources of energy has caused more environmental damage than any other human activity results global warming. Most important Renewable energy are sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat. Beside these, the use of bio-fuels, biomass energy are very popular now a days. Biomass energy comes from solid biomass, biogas, municipal waste and residential waste by series of process like Combustion, Gasification, Fermentation. Another type of alternative of fossil fuel is Bio fuel, it include algal bio fuel, vegetable oil (Jatropha oil). So we should take care of natural resources, conserve them. Time comes for introduction of renewable energy in all sectors of human activities. More research are essential for inventing eco friendly i.e. R4 (reduce, reuse, and recycle and repair) and cost effective technology as early as possible. Keywords : Biomass, Bio-fuel, photo-bioreactor, micro algae, Botaryococcus brauni, Ankistrodismus sp., Jatropha curcas, butanol, methano, ethano

Introduction In the past century, it has been seen that the consumption of non-renewable source of energy has caused more environmental damage than any other human activity that contribute to global warming. Renewable energy is energy that comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat and biomass. The role of new and renewable energy has been assuming increasing significance in recent times with the growing concern for the country’s energy security. Biomass materials are used since millennia for meeting myriad human needs including energy. Main sources of biomass energy are trees, crops and animal waste. Among the biomass energy sources, wood fuels are the most prominent. Presently, the biomass sources contribute 14% of global energy and 38% of energy in developing countries (Woods and Hall, 1994). Biomass energy is derived from two spheres - biomass energy production practices and energy conversion technologies. An additional problem with the traditional biomass use is the social costs associated with excessive pollution. Advancement of science preferring the energy conversion Technology for biomass energy production. Biomass integrated gasifier / combined cycle (BIG/CC) technology has potential to be competitive (Reddy et al, 1997; Johansson et al, 1996) since biomass as a feedstock is more promising than coal for gasification due to its low sulphur content and less reactive character. The modern technologies offer possibilities to convert biomass into synthetic gaseous or liquid fuels (like ethanol and methanol) and electricity (Johansson et al, 1993). Modern biomass has potential to penetrate in four segments -i) process heat applications in industries generating biomass waste, ii) cooking energy in 271

domestic and commercial sectors (through charcoal and briquettes), iii) electricity generation and iv) transportation sector with liquid fuels (Table-1). Table-1 The potential available and the installed capacities for Biomass and Bagasse: Source

Potential

Installed

Biomass

16,000 MW

222 MW

Bagasse (Cogeneration) in existing sugar mills

3,500 MW

332 MW

Bio-fuel is the esters of vegetables oil animal fats are known as Biodiesel. Jatropha curcas is a renewable non-edible plant. Jatropha is a wildly growing hardy plant in arid and semi-arid regions of the country on degraded soils having low fertility and moisture. The seeds of Jatropha contain 5060% oil and the oil has been converted to biodiesel by the well-known transesterification process and used it to diesel engine for Performance evaluation. Sugar cane is the most efficient biofuel feedstock in commercial use today and sugar cane ethanol can deliver greenhouse gas reductions of up to 90% compared to conventional fuels. In India, the vast majority of ethanol is produced from sugarcane molasses, a byproduct of sugar. In the future it may also be produced directly from sugarcane juice. The world wide search for source of oil as an alternative to fossil fuel has found a new hope in algal species. Microalgae are photosynthetic microorganisms that use solar energy to combine water with carbon dioxide to create bio-fuel (Goswami and Borah, 2012). The lipid, or oily part of the algae biomass can then be extracted and converted into biodiesel through a process similar to that used for any other vegetable oil, or converted in a refinery into “drop-in” replacements for petroleum-based fuels. The algae’s carbohydrate content can be fermented into bioethanol and biobutanol. Some algal strains have high oil content and can be potentially used for biodiesel production. Provided is a list of algae with their oil content (% by weight) Schizochytrium sp 50-77 %; Botryococcus braunii 2575 %; Nitzschia sp. 45-47 %; Neochloris oleoabundans 35-54 %; Nannochloropsis sp. 31-68 %; Chlorella sp 28-32 %. PHOTOSYNTHETIC ORGANISMS AS ENERGY SOURCES Photosynthetic organisms have been collecting and storing the sun’s energy for more than 2 billion years. Plants capture about percent of all solar energy that reaches the earth’s surface. That kinetic energy is transformed, via photosynthesis, into chemical bonds in organic molecules. A little more than half of the energy that plants collect is spent in their activity, the rest is stored in biomass. The magnitude of this resource is difficult to measure. Most experts estimate useful biomass production at 15 to 20 times the amount we currently get from all commercial energy sources. It would be ridiculous to consider consuming all green plants as fuel, but biomass has the potential to become a prime source of energy. It has many advantages over nuclear and fossil fuels because of its renewability and easy accessibility. Biomass remains the primary energy source in the developing countries in Asia. Share of biomass in energy varies - from a very high over three quarters in percent in Nepal Laos, Bhutan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Myanmar; nearly half in Vietnam, Pakistan and Philippines; nearly a third in India and Indonesia, to a low 10 percent in China and 7 percent in Malaysia (FAO, 1997). Estimates of the share of biomass in total energy in India vary from nearly a third (36%) to a half (46%) of total energy (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995). 272

Biomass contributes over a third of primary energy in India. Biomass fuels are predominantly used in rural households for cooking and water heating, as well as by traditional and artisan industries. Biomass delivers most energy for the domestic use (rural - 90% and urban - 40%) in India. Wood fuels contribute 56 percent of total biomass energy (Sinha et. al, 1994). Consumption of wood has grown annually at 2 percent rate over past two decades (FAO, 1996). About 30 percent of the world populations— depend on firewood and charcoal as their primary energy source. Scientists are working to design and distribute highly efficient stoves, both as a way to improve the lives of poor people and to reduce forest degradation. In European countries, fuel wood and other biomass sources are becoming increasingly popular in the face of rising oil prices. Both from agricultural wastes (such as straw) and biomass crops are use by much country as their energy resource, such as reeds and elephant grass growing on land unsuitable for crops. Burning these crops in an industrial boiler for district heating makes it easier to install and maintain pollution control equipment than in individual stoves. Most plant materials have low sulfur, so it doesn’t contribute to acid rain. And because it burns at a lower temperature than coal, it doesn’t create as much nitrogen oxides. Of course, these crops are carbon neutral—that is, they absorb as much CO2 in growing as they emit when burned. Some utilities are installing “flex-fuel” boilers in their power plants that can burn wood chips, agricultural waste, or other biomass fuels. Co-combustion of coal together with biomass can have benefits over burning either alone. Including biomass in the mix reduces greenhouse gas emissions. And burning coal along with biomass improves combustion properties. Another reason for the renewed interest in biomass is the commercial viability of biomass in niche applications and closing in of the technological and economic gap with the fossil energy. The cheapest biomass resources, the waste products from wood or agro-processing units, are available at competitive costs. However, their supply is limited. The plantation grown fuels are more expensive, but their supply costs are improving. (Shukla, 1998). Where wood and other fuels are in short supply, people often dry and burn animal manure. This may seem like a logical use of waste biomass, but it can intensify food shortages in poorer countries. Not putting this manure back on the land as fertilizer reduces crop production and food supplies. In India, for example, where fuel wood supplies have been chronically short for many years, a limited manure supply must fertilize crops and provide household fuel. Cows in India produce more than 800 million tons of dung per year, more than half of which is dried and burned in cooking fires. If that dung were applied to fields as fertilizer, it could boost crop production of edible grains by 20 million tons per year, enough to feed about 40 million people. When cow dung is burned in open fires, more than 90 percent of the potential heat and most of the nutrients are lost (Cunningham et al. 2010). CLEAN AND EFFICIENT METHANE FROM BIOMASS The decay of biomass produces a gas - methane - that can be used as an energy source. In landfills, wells can be drilled to release the methane from the decaying organic matter. Then pipes from each well carry the gas to a central point where it is filtered and cleaned before burning. Methane also can be produced from biomass through a process called anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digestion involves using bacteria to decompose organic matter in the absence of oxygen. Many people are familiar with the fact that swamp gas is explosive. Swamps are simply large methane digesters, basins of wet plant and animal wastes sealed from the air by a layer of water. Under these conditions, organic materials are decomposed by anaerobic (oxygen-free) rather than aerobic (oxygen-using) bacteria, producing flammable gases instead of carbon dioxide. This same process may be reproduced artificially by placing organic wastes in a container and providing warmth and water (Cunningham et al. 2010). In Kolkata, scientist Bijan Bihari Mukhoti successfully produced Methane gas from biodegradable wastes for cooking. Burning methane produced from 273

manure provides more heat than burning the dung itself, and the sludge left over from bacterial digestion is a rich fertilizer, containing healthy bacteria as well as most of the nutrients originally in the dung. Whether the manure is of livestock or human origin, airtight digestion also eliminates some health hazards associated with direct use of dung, such as exposure to fecal pathogens and parasites. Any kind of organic waste material: livestock manure, kitchen and garden scraps, and even municipal garbage and sewage can be used to generate gas. In fact, municipal landfills are active sites of methane production, contributing as much as 20 percent of the annual output of methane to the atmosphere. This is a waste of a valuable resource and a threat to the environment because methane absorbs infrared radiation and contributes to the greenhouse effect. Following is a list of some States with most potential for biomass production : Andhra Pradesh (200 MW) Bihar (200 MW) Gujarat (200 MW) Karnataka (300 MW) Maharashtra (1,000 MW) Punjab (150 MW) Tamil Nadu (350 MW) Uttar Pradesh (1,000 MW) ETHANOL AND BIODIESEL CAN CONTRIBUTE TO FUEL SUPPLIES Ethanol and biodiesel, are by far the biggest recent news in biomass energy. Globally, production of these two fuels is booming, from Brazil, which gets about 40 percent of its transportation energy from ethanol generated from sugarcane. Corn crop to produce that much ethanol from corn. We need to find other ways to create bio-fuels. Crops with a high oil content, such as soybeans, sunflower seed, rape seed, and palm oil fruits are relatively easy to make into biodiesel. In some cases, the oil needs only minimal cleaning to be used in a standard diesel engine. Yields per hectare for many of these crops are low. However, it would take a very large land area to meet our transportation needs with soy or sunflowers, for example. Furthermore, diversion of these oils for vehicles deprives humans of an important source of edible oils. A relatively new entry into the biodiesel field seems to be a good alternative to both oil palm and soybean oil. Jatropha curcas is a shrub native to Mexico and the Caribbean, whose nuts have a high (but toxic) oil content that can be easily converted to diesel fuel. In the 1600s, Portuguese sailors, who used the seeds for long-burning lamp oil, took plants to India. Scientists there recently have bred prolific new varieties that grow well on marginal soil with relatively little water or fertilizer. India has set aside 50 million ha (123 million acres) of land for Jatropha and expects it to meet 20 percent of its diesel consumption. In 2008, Air New Zealand flew a Boeing 747 using a 50-50 blend of Jatropha oil and aviation fuel. CELLULOSIC ETHANOL: THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE Butanol can be produced from plant starch. Crops such as sugarcane and sugar beets have a high sugar content that can be fermented into ethanol, but sugar is expensive and the yields from these crops are generally low, especially in temperate climates. Starch in grains, such as corn, have higher yields and can be converted into sugars that can be turned by yeast into ethanol, butanol (which burns in engines much like gasoline), or methanol. Everyone agrees that cellulosic ethanol—if we can find ways to produce it economically—would have considerable environmental, social, and economic 274

advantages over using edible grains or sugar crops for transportation fuel. Most plants put the bulk of the energy they capture from the sun into cellulose and a related polymer, hemicelluloses, which are made of long chains of simple sugars. Woody plants add sticky glue, called lignin, to hold cells together. If we can find ways to economically release those simple sugars so they can be fermented into ethanol or other useful liquid fuels, we could greatly increase the net energy yield from all sorts of crops. ALGAL BIO-FUEL : GREAT GREEN HOPE Algae fuel or Algal bio-fuel is an alternative to fossil fuel that uses algae as its source of natural deposits. Algae can produce more oil per hectare than most other biofuels and can be cultivated on non-arable land, reducing the competition of food crops for land. Miscanthus can yield up to 13,000 liters of ethanol per hectare, some algal species growing in a photobioreactor might theoretically produce 30 times as much high-quality oil. This is partly because single-celled algae can grow 30 times as fast as higher plants. Furthermore, some algae store up to half their total mass as oil. Photobioreactors are much more expensive to build and operate than planting crops, but they could be placed on land unsuitable for agriculture and they could use recycled water. Open ponds are much cheaper than photobioreactors, but they also produce far less biomass per unit area. So far, the actual yield from algal growth facilities is actually about the same as Miscanthus. One of the most intriguing benefits of algal growth facilities is that they could be placed next to conventional power plants, where CO2 from burning either fossil fuels or biomass could be captured and used for algal growth. These would actually be carbon negative: providing a net reduction in atmospheric carbon while also creating useful fuel. The north east region of India, particularly Assam and West Bengal has a rich diversity of fresh water microalgae. Research involving the isolation and screening of freshwater microalgae for potential strains suitable for sustainable production of renewable biofuels and development of technology for mitigation of harmful green house gases(Goswami and Borah, 2012). Many microalgal species have been isolated and screened for all content in this region. Among the isolated microalgae, Botryococcus braunil, Ankistrodesmus sp, Scenedesmus sp, Euglena sp, Haematococcus etc are a few oleaginous microalgae noteworthy for biodiesel production. Within India, current analyses suggest that sustainable cultivation of various algal species for biofuels are possible at four locations : a. In paddy fields as a multi-tier crop b. In saline brackish region of Kachch c. Urban domestic waste water and d. On fishery deficient seashores CONCLUSION The world is getting modernized and industrialized day by day. As a result vehicles and engines are increasing. But energy sources used in these engines are limited and decreasing gradually. Due the environmental concern and limited resources of petroleum oil has increase the demand of biodiesel. Bio-fuels are in many cases sulphur free and carbon negative. Thus it reduces the scope of global warming, though energy is made available. India has a vast supply of renewable energy resources, and it has one of the largest programs in the world for deploying renewable energy products and systems. Indeed it is the only country in the world to have an exclusive ministry for renewable energy development, the Ministry of Non Conventional Energy Source (MNES). There is a large potential for renewable energy in India, an estimated aggregate of over 100,000 MW. The country is aiming to achieve up to 10% of additional installed capacity to be set up till 2012 to come from renewable energy sources. People should use renewable energy because non-renewable energy resources threaten the 275

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