Journal of Biofuels and Bioenergy (June 2015) 1(1): 28-33 DOI: 10.5958/2454-8618.2015.00004.8
Review Article
Biogas: A Sustainable and Potential Fuel for Transport Application Bhaskar Jha, Rimika M Kapoor, Vandit Vijay, Virendra Kumar Vijay*, Ram Chandra
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Biogas Production and Enrichment Laboratory, Centre for Rural Development and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India
ABSTRACT Keywords: Energy scenario, Biogas production potential, Compressed biogas, Biogas
Energy is an essential ingredient for economic growth, social development, human welfare and improving the standards of living. This growing consumption of energy has resulted in increased dependence on fossil fuels, which is causing environmental problems. Depletion of fossil fuels, energy security and large emission of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is a matter of great concern today. Diesel and petrol are the major transport fuels in India and each year billions of money are being expended for their import. Biogas can play a key role in transformation and dependency with a large potential in India (approximately 48,383 million m3 biogas annually), having possibilities to replace and therefore reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for transportation sector. Based on the Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Statistics 2011–2012 data, the contribution of upgraded biogas in the transportation sector as a percentage of total petroleum fuels consumption for the year 2011–2012 is approximately 86.8% if used to replace transport fuel which is quite encouraging. A 10 Nm3/h capacity fully automated biogas purification and bottling plant with improved design parameters has been designed, fabricated and implemented at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) campus. The enriched and bottled biogas has been regularly fuelled to a Wagon R car (from last three years), and to analyse the performance of it, mass emissions testing has been performed at ICAT (International Centre for Automotive Testing). Results of mass emissions, i.e., nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO),hydrocarbon (HC) and particulate matter(PM) were complying with Bharat Stage – IV (BS – IV) norms. In principal, biomethane can be used for exactly the same applications as natural gas, if the final composition is in line with the different natural gas qualities on the market.upgradation, Biogas for vehicular application
*Corresponding author Email id:
[email protected]
Jha et al. (Biogas: A Sustainable and Potential Fuel for Transport Application)
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INTRODUCTION Energy is one of the most essential constituents for the economic build up, social advancement, human welfare and enhancing the standards of living. However, this growing energy consumption has caused the increased fossil fuels dependence, which is causing a great environmental concern and contributing a severe damage to climatic which is the greatest challenge our planet is facing today. So with the need to ensure the long-term security of energy supply, we should look for the ways which would meet the needs of people today and in the future in an accessible, equitable and efficient manner by reducing the carbon foot print. With the potential of unlimited supply, biogas is an effective, renewable non-fossil fuel with the benefits in numerous fields including environmental, energy, economic and waste management which can be commenced in rural, urban and industrial area. With the expeditious industrialisation and population increase, there is a generation of huge quantity of wastes, both solid and liquid, in industrial sectors such as food processing, sugar, pulp and paper, distilleries, dairies, slaughter houses, tanneries, poultry farms, etc., and hence, there is a huge potential for the biogas production both at medium to large-size biogas. Moreover, the dung and diary industries are also responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contributing to climate change (Harsdoraff, 2012). In this regard, significant development in the field of biogas is taking place in all around the world and several companies have rigged many biogas plants worldwide. A lot of gained experience promotes the process optimisation and the development of new and more efficient technology to tackle the different issue associated with this. Transport sector is eminently reliant on oil and India is no exception to this trend (International Energy Agency, 2013). Energy security concerns arise due to a very high dependence on imports which create uncertainties for prices and supplies. According to British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy, 2013 in the year of 2012 India imported 74.6% of oil and 37.5% of natural gas. Being a world’s fourth largest energy consumer, per capita energy consumption is very low in India and with the ever increasing number of private vehicle the inclusive domestic consumption of petrol and petroleum product is on rise in India. If we consider the total spending of country as a whole then 80-90% is done to pay the import bills on petroleum products. As we have only a limited petroleum reserves in India, each year we are importing a huge amount of petroleum products worth billions of to meet our needs especially for the transportation need. India, as being a vast agrarian country with more than 1.2 billion human and around 300 million cattle population there is a great opportunity of biogas production and the produced gas can be proven a versatile option for replacing the fossil fuel usage for transport application and also for the other agricultural operations which uses diesel as well. Resource Availability and Potential for Biogas Production Many bioresources studies have been performed by researchers, policy makers, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs),which show that there is huge potential of Biogas production in India. Brisk industrialisation and population increase in India caused the generation of thousands of tonnes of organic waste. These sources range from small scale such as domestic, community level to a large scale including the industries, i.e., dairy, distilleries, paper, sugar, poultry industries, etc. India is having large potential for installation of the domestic biogas plants those can run on underexploited biogas substrates such as kitchen waste, weeds and crop
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Journal of Biofuels and Bioenergy (June 2015)
residues (Bond and Templeton, 2011). An estimate of the total biogas generation potential is summarised in Table 1. Table 1: Estimation of biogas production potential from organic feedstock for biogas plants in India Feedstock
Biogas generation potential
Source
Animal manure (cattle dung)
18240 million m3 year-1
Bamboriya, 2014
There is a potential for 12 million family-size biogas plants which can produce 3448 million m3 year-1
Rao et al., 2010
18240 (total) – 3448 =14792 million m3 year-1 Poultry waste
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Crop residue and agro- waste
438,227 m3 day-1 =160 million m3 year-1 3
-1
Rao et al., 2010 3
-1
45.8 million m day = 16717 million m year 3
-1
Rao et al., 2010
Vegetable market waste
4000 million m year
Lal, 2011
Food waste/canteen waste
1270 million population×0.3 × 0.25 kg food waste person-1 = 95 million kg food waste = 5780 million m3 year-1
Banks, 2009
Municipal waste
9.23 million m3 day-1 = 3369 million m3 year-1
Rao et al., 2010
Distilleries
1507 million m3 year-1
Global Methane Initiative, 2011
Dairy industrial waste
219409 m3 day-1 = 80 million m3 year-1 3
-1
3
Rao et al., 2010 -1
Rao et al., 2010 Parivesh, 1994
Pulp and paper industry
412,278 m day =153 million m year
Sugar industries
0.6 million m3 day-1 (wastewater) + 2.9 million m3 day-1 (press mud ) = 1277 million m3 year-1
Global Methane Initiative, 2011 NMP, 2007
Slaughter houses
1,494,225 m3 day-1 = 548 million m3 year-1
Rao et al., 2010
Total raw biogas generation potential
3
-1
48,383 million m year
Source: Vijay (2013)
Upgraded Biogas as a Transport Fuel in India: Potential and Prospects As shown above there is an enormous potential for biogas production and so biogas upgrading and bottling as well. It will not only help in waste management, but also in the improving the environmental conditions. In biogas, the presence of methane makes it combustible whereas at the same time carbon dioxide which is a non-combustible component constraints its compressibility and so making biogas difficult to be stored in a vessel or container. So to make the biogas of natural gas quality, the raw biogas should be devoid of component other than methane which includes carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, particles and water. After removing these component from biogas, what it called the upgradation, enrichment process, the methane enrich gas can be stored/bottled at a discharge of 200 bar pressure. This compressed gas is usually termed as CBG (compressed biogas). An automated water scrubbing-based biogas purification plant has been developed at IIT Delhi and is presented in Figure 1.
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Jha et al. (Biogas: A Sustainable and Potential Fuel for Transport Application)
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Figure 1: Automated water scrubbing-based biogas purification plant installed at IIT Delhi
Table 2: Exhaust mass emission test (source: International Centre for Automotive Testing) Fuel type
CO (g/km)
HC (g/km)
NOx (g/km)
CO2 (g/km)
CNG
1.419
0.312
0.035
107.40
Biogas
1.170
0.099
0.023
112.24
The enriched and bottled biogas has been regularly fuelled to a Wagon R car, and to analyse the performance of it, mass emissions testing has been performed at ICAT (International Centre for Automotive Testing). Results of mass emissions (NOx, CO, HC, PM) were also complying with BS-IV norms (Subramanian et al., 2013). Possible Scenarios for the Adoption of Upgraded Biogas as a Transport Fuel in India In India, nearly 1.1 million vehicles are running on natural gas, which consumes less than 2% of the total natural gas of the total natural gas composition (Mathur, 2012). It is believed that within next decade the number of vehicle will increase to over five million and so the share of natural gas import to India will also increase significantly. In country like Sweden, there are many numbers of CBG filling plant are available whereas such development is yet to start in India and till now there is no commercial CBG filling station available. Based on the Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Statistics 2011-2012 data, the contribution of upgraded biogas in the transportation sector as a percentage of total petroleum fuels consumption for the year 2011-2012 is approximately 86.8% if used to replace transport fuel, which is quite promising (Vijay et al., 2014).
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Journal of Biofuels and Bioenergy (June 2015)
CONCLUSIONS
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Biogas bottling and using it as a transport fuel is a kind of renewable energy source that can be produced from biodegradable/organic wastes and can contribute in making our environment clean and in the waste management also in which is a matter of great concern today in economically viable way. There a huge potential of biogas production in India ranging from household level to a large industrial level and if utilised in a proper way the huge amount of fuels which are being use as a transport fuel can be replace by the upgraded and bottled biogas. In this way, we can save money worth billions of dollar which we are using it to import the fossil fuels. Small-scale biogas upgrading and bottling technology is thus a step towards helping in finding a replacement of transport fuel. However, there is a need of policies implementation and financial support from the government for promotion of biogas upgrading and bottling in India. Also, there is a need of more research and development in this field to make the upgrading and bottling technology more economic and at the same time more industries/companies should involve in this sector. REFERENCES Bamboriya M.L. (2014) Biogas production mechanism, Akshay Urja, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, 8(2):18-21. Banks C.J. (2009) Optimising anaerobic digestion. Conference on Evaluating the Potential for Anaerobic Digestion to Provide Energy and Soil Amendment. University of Reading, United Kingdom.http:/ /www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/rrps_AD250309_ optimising_anaerobic_digestion.pdf/$file/ rrps_AD250309_optimising_anaerobic_ digestion.pdf Accessed on 6 May 2015. Bond T. and Templeton M.R. (2011) History and future of domestic biogas plants in the developing world, Energy Sustain Dev, 15(4):347–354. Global Methane Initiative (2011) Resource Assessment for Livestock and Agro-Industrial Wastes–India. https://www.globalmethane.org/documents/ag_india_res_assessment.pdf Last accessed on 6 May 2015. Harsdoraff M. (2012) The economics of cow dung creating green jobs in the dairy industry in India, case study – A green value chain analysis of the cow dung and dairy industry in Jabalpur, Green Jobs in Asia Regional Conference, International Labor Organization, 1-63. Lal B. (2011) Biogas/Energy production from waste (Municipal, Agricultural, Food). Joint presentation BBSRC and Department of Biotechnology Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, New Delhi. http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/india/Biogas-India.pdf Last accessed on 3 June 2015. Mathur A.S. (2012) Basic statistics on Indian petroleum and natural gas, 2011-12. Report, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (Economic Division), Government of India, 1-51. NMP (2007) National Master Plan for Development of Waste-to-Energy in India, Structured Urban and Industrial Database. Parivesh (1994) Pulp and Paper Industry. A News Letter from ENVIS Centre – Central Pollution Control Board. http://cpcbenvis.nic.in/cpcb_newsletter/PULP%20AND%20PAPERS.pdf. Last accessed on 20 May 2015. Rao V.P., Baral S.S., Dey R. and Mutnuri. S. (2010) Biogas generation potential by anaerobic digestion for sustainable energy development in India. Renew Sustain Energy Rev, 14(7):2086–2094. Subramanian K.A., Mathad V.C., Vijay V.K. and Subbarao P.M.V. (2013) Comparative evaluation of emission and fuel economy of an automotive spark ignition vehicle fuelled with methane enriched biogas and CNG using chassis dynamometer, Appl. Energy, 105:17-29.
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Vijay V.K., Kapoor R.M. and Kaparaju P.(2013) Project report on Valorisation of food waste to biogas: Evaluation of the role of small-scale low cost biogas upgrading and bottling systems as a means of contributing to local transportation needs in India and EU, 1-91. Vijay V.K., Kapoor R.M., Trivedi A. and Narale P. (2014) Biogas and Bottling Technology for Vehicular and Cooking Applications Management of Natural Resources in a Changing Environment – II, Springer International Publishing, Germany, 135-153.
