Biodiesel, an emerging renewable source.

Biodiesel, an emerging renewable source.

-- -- -- -- Leena Mehendale

Principle Secretary, GAD,

Maharashtra

Twentieth Century saw an extensive use of fossil fuels

all over the world, the innovations of hundreds and

thousands of different uses for petroleum & natural gas has

led to a significant increase in the need for fossil fuel in the

world. A growing number of scientific researchers and

political leaders have urged prompt conservation of fossil

fuels by investing immediately in energy-efficient vehicles,

machinery, and structures and by gradually shifting to

alternative sources of energy. The reason most commonly

given in support of fossil fuel conservation is that

“Petroleum Resources are finite” and “the need to prevent

future global climate change”. Most of these arguments

say, “fossil fuels provide about 95 percent of the

commercial energy used in the world economy”.....

“Combustion of those fuels constitutes the largest source of

emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases”. Most

scientists agree that such emissions cannot be continued

indefinitely at current or increasing levels without causing

devastating effects on ecosystems and on people.

Electricity generated from fossil fuels such as coal and

crude oil has led to high concentrations of harmful gases in

the atmosphere. This has in turn led to many problems

being faced today such as ozone depletion global warming

and Tsunami.

The consumption of non-renewable sources of energy,

thus, has caused more environmental damage than any

other human activity. Therefore, alternative sources of

energy have become very important and relevant to today’s

world. These sources, such as the sun and wind, can never

be exhausted and therefore are renewable. They cause less

emission and are available locally. Their use can, to a large

extent, reduce chemical, radioactive, and thermal

pollution. They stand out as a viable source of clean and

limitless energy, as a source of non-conventional energy.

Most of the renewable sources of energy are fairly non-

polluting and considered clean.

In Indian context, “Bio-diesel”, as a source of

alternative and renewable source of energy has started

gaining momentum in a big way. Biodiesel (fatty acid alkyl

esters) is a cleaner burning diesel replacement, made from

natural, renewable sources such as Tree Borne Oilseed and

Animal Fats. Just like petroleum diesel, bio-diesel also

operates in compression-ignition engines, in fact the first

ever such engine invented by the German scientist Diesel

used peanut oil for fuel. Blends of up to 20% bio-diesel

(mixed with petroleum diesel) can be used in nearly all

diesel equipments and are compatible with most storage

and distribution equipments. These low-level blends (20%

and less) generally do not require any engine

modifications. Bio-diesel can provide the same payload

capacity as diesel.

Jatropha Curcas has been identified for India as the most

suitable Tree Borne Oilseed (TBO) for production of bio-

diesel both in view of the non-edible oil available from it

and its presence all throughout the country. The capacity of

Jatropha Curcas to rehabilitate degraded or dry lands,

from which the poor derive their sustenance, by improving

land’s water retention capacity, makes it additionally

suitable for up-gradation of land resources. Presently, in

some Indian villages, farmers are extracting oil from

Jatropha and after settling and decanting it, they are

mixing the filtered oil with diesel fuel. Although, so far the

farmers have not observed any damage to their machinery,

yet this remains to be tested and PCRA-like institutes

alongwith agro-mechanical divisions of various agricultural

universities must start working on it.

The fact remains that for use in modern machinery as well

as for mixing and storage this oil needs to be converted to

bio-diesel though a chemical reaction, called “Trans-

Esterification”. This reaction is relatively simple and does

not require any exotic material. The R&D Division of IOCL

has been using a laboratory scale plant of 100 kg/day

capacity for trans-esterification and designing of larger

capacity plants is being worked out in Anand Univ. Gujrat,

Delhi Univ and IIP, Dehradun. PCRA has developed

institutional linkages for research & development with

these R&D Institutes. With this initiative, suitable

technology & equipments for esterification of bio-diesel on

small & medium scales have also been developed. A few

industries have done experimental production even at 50

tonnes a day. These larger plants are useful for centralized

production of bio-diesel though it can be continued in

smaller capacity plants of .5 to 20kg/day at decentralized

level in villages till the optimum levels are not worked out.

These kind of small plants can be a way out to provide

energy security to our remote and rural areas, while it

would also contribute towards employment generation.

As such, all kinds of Tree Borne Oilseeds, be it edible or no-

edible can be used as a raw material for production of bio-

diesel. But from the Indian point of view we are yet to meet

our current demand of edible oils, hence the option left out

for India is non-edible oilseeds.

With sky rocketing crude oil prices, what is required now is

to spread the knowledge of this system and debug some

crucial fiscal issues like taxation policy, tax holidays and

subsidies, import concessions to palm crude oil. In

addition more attention is needed on developing agro-

economic practices and CDM mechanism, so that this

source of alternative energy can be exploited to its fullest

extent in our country.