Waste to Wealth ($) - The exciting world of Biogas

Prelude

I am a high-school student and the learnings/views expressed in my blog are based on my own life experiences, the exposure gained from schooling, observations from the environment and developments around in our daily life, conversations with my parents, friends, teachers and the follow-on research based on information and data available on the internet on topics that intrigue me. There could be gaps or errors in my views and correlation of data points/information I had access to. Request the blog readers to provide inputs on areas that need correction in understanding. Thank you for the overwhelming views and responses received for my first blog post on ‘Managing Kitchen Waste’ and looking forward to such continued support.

Some interesting points to ponder upon:

• Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) imports of India: 9.43 billion USD (FY 22), 6.49 billion USD (FY 23)

• The volume of LNG imports for India growing each year while the value of imports is varying depending on LNG prices in global markets.

• India generates close to 150,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste every day and close to 50% of it could be organic waste.

• Burning crop residues in the neighboring states (Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh) contributes to the worsening of air quality in Delhi during winter almost every year.

I attempted to connect the above points in my blog post. In my view, these are related and important points for solving some major issues we are currently facing in the country with the environment and climate change. Please read on!

My previous post in the blog focused on managing kitchen waste locally within gated communities using organic waste converters, which generate compost from the waste. I furthered my research in this area, which led me to more exciting learnings on other solutions that have the potential to address complex problems around the environment, climate change, global warming, etc. ‘Biogas’ appeared more promising among such solutions and I made it my point of focus in this article.

During my initial conversations with people about Biogas, I learned that it is not new in our country and several villages and households across the country (India) had small-scale gobar gas plants decades ago that converted cow dung into biogas for domestic usage. This practice did not scale up in the country in later years, possibly with a supply of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) through gas cylinders for domestic use across the country.

However, the focus on biogas gained attention again over the past few years considering the growing demand for clean energy. Bio-gas is appearing promising for tackling two of the world's most important issues currently: solid waste management and the demand for clean energy. Using organic waste for biogas generation will help reduce huge volumes of organic waste generated every day, thus minimizing the environmental impact and health hazards from such organic waste. On the other hand, biogas generated from such organic waste can cater to our energy needs (to some extent) thus minimizing dependency on sources of energy such as natural gas, LPG, thermal power, etc.

The generation of biogas from organic waste is a simple process. Biogas is a byproduct of anaerobic digestion of organic matter including food waste, animal waste, and agricultural residue. In the absence of oxygen, microorganisms break down the organic matter to produce digestate, a nutrient-rich byproduct, and biogas. The generated biogas can be either stored for later use or processed to produce biomethane, heat, or electricity. The nutrient-rich digestate can be used as fertilizer in agriculture. Below are some good examples of biogas generation I came across, which appeared relevant for solving waste management issues:

Indore Biogas Plant (Gobar-Dhan Plant) in Madhya Pradesh, India is a great example of large-scale production of biogas using organic matter. This plant can process approximately 550 tons of organic waste generated from the city every day to produce biogas that can support running approx. 150 buses in the city and generates a large volume of organic manure as a by-product. This project also has plans to supply the produced gas to the city households through piped gas supply operators in the city. Similar plants have been set up or are being set up across the States in India, however, the speed and spread for establishing such plants may need substantial improvement. Every city above a certain population threshold must be mandated to have such biogas plants to process organic solid waste instead of dumping it into landfills.

The Mahindra World City in Chennai established a biogas production plant that converts 8 tons of food and kitchen waste from its premises daily and produces up to 1000 kg of raw biogas yielding 400 kg/day of purified CNG grade fuel, equivalent to 200kW power plant. Further, it produces 4 tons of organic fertilizer per day. The generated biogas can be used for automobiles and as cooking gas and organic fertilizer to improve soil fertility. Taking learnings from such plants in the private sector, all large hotels/ resorts, large office campuses, large university/college campuses, etc should be mandated to establish such biogas production plants to process their kitchen and other organic waste from their premises.

George Farm Energy Park, established by the VEGPRO group in Kenya, has been producing more than two megawatts of electricity using the agricultural residue from their farmlands in the country for years. VEGPRO in Kenya is into growing, packaging, and exporting a variety of vegetables to the retailers in UK and Europe. The residue (plant and vegetable waste) from its farms and packaging unit is transferred to the biogas plant (George Farm Energy Park) for the generation of biogas, which is used by the generators to produce electricity. Electricity generated from this plant is used for energy needs for its farm cultivation and supplies excess energy to the electricity distributors in the country. From secondary sources, it is learnt that the energy supplied by Gorge Farm Energy Park can be used to power up to approx. 5000 houses. In addition, the residue from the biogas plant i.e. fertilizer is transported back to VEGPRO’s fruit and flower farms to help grow their crops.

Hazy Delhi Winters

Severe pollution is a common sight in Delhi’s winters each year, and burning agricultural waste in the neighboring states is reportedly among the key contributors to this problem every year. Residents in the city suffer heavily from this pollution and it disrupts life on several counts during the winters. Most households run air purifiers indoors to mitigate risks from breathing polluted air and wear masks when they step out of the home. Delhi Government has been implementing various measures to tackle pollution problems for several years including migration of all its diesel-run buses to CNG and mandating all neighboring states and private operators to run only CNG or electric buses within and passing through Delhi. However, the haze from burning agricultural waste remains a major problem that is haunting Delhi residents each year, causing severe health issues and costs to the residents and the Government. Biogas plants for processing the agricultural residue in neighboring states could be a real solution to address this problem for good. Large-scale biogas plants may serve multiple purposes to address this problem including processing agriculture waste, minimizing air pollution, reducing health issues and related costs to the citizens and the government and more importantly it can be a clean energy source for heating requirements during the winter and/or to run the busses for public transport. Lastly, the residue (fertilizer) from the generation of biogas can be reused for improving soil fertility in agricultural lands.

The Way Forward:

Considering the benefits of Biogas production, the Government of India launched the ‘GOBARdhan (Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan)’ initiative for promoting the conversion of organic waste like cattle dung/ agri-residue, etc. to biogas/ CBG/ Bio CNG. The Indore Biogas plant discussed in this blog post has been established under this GOBARdhan initiative. There is a need to establish such biogas plants on a large scale across all the Indian cities and towns at a rapid scale to address the solid waste management issue and to generate clean sources of energy for our consumption. More importantly, production of biogas at large scale across the country can help reduce the dependency on natural gas that is imported causing several billions of dollars of expenditure for the country.

A well-rounded approach including processing organic waste within the residential/gated colonies, and establishing biogas plants for processing other organic waste (agricultural residue, the remainder of organic waste from households reaching the landfills, etc) can go a long way in addressing the pollution, climate change and global warming issues. While this information may not be new to a lot of readers, the research to write this blog post has been an eye-opener for me as an individual and has shaped me into a better-informed and possibly more responsible global citizen of the World. Lastly, my grandparents repeat in every conversation with me that 'Health is Wealth'. Solutions such as Biogas, apart from financial gains, have a huge scope for providing a healthy world to people around the world.

Hope you can now connect the dots between the title of my blog post, the ‘interesting points to ponder’ included at the beginning of this post, and the content of the post. Thank you for reading my post.

Sources -

1. https://www.esi-africa.com/renewable-energy/biogas-plant-sells-energy-to-kenyas-national-grid/

2. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/haryana-govt-comes-down-heavily-on-farmers-imposes-fines-of-rs-25-lakh-on-stubble-burning-offenders-11699016247952.html

3. https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/indias-domestic-natural-gas-production-rises-4-lng-imports-up-12-7-in-h1-2023/106588826#:~:text=On%20the%20import% 20front%2C%20India%20 witnessed%20a%20 significant,from%20US%20%249.43%2 0billion%20to%20US%20%246.49%20billion

4. https://www.mahindralifespaces.com/mahindra-world-city/chennai/sustainability/bio-cng-plant/

5. https://groundreport.in/india-generates-150000-tonne-of-municipal-solid-waste-every-day/#:~:text=According %20to%20the%202023%20State%20of%20India%E2%80%99s%20 Environment,tonnes%20of%20municipal%20solid%20waste%20%28MSW%29%20every%20day

6. https://www.vegpro-group.com/

7. https://youtu.be/7_1ELq9qGPo

8. https://youtu.be/ff7wdwNX9sY