Bio-fuels in India–the need to explore alternatives

Sandeep Chaturvedi, President, BDAI, in replies to questions from TrafficInfraTech, said that many biodiesel manufacturing units had closed down over the last few years. According to him, “The national biodiesel policy encouraged installation of capacity but closed all marketing opportunities by giving absolute monopoly on marketing and pricing to the OMCs. Imports of economically available fatty acids and other non edible oils were completely banned. Hence, only units that were 100% export oriented or those that existed in the Special Economic Zones could operate and the rest were closed.”

There are two main reasons for poor performance of the Indian biodiesel sector: Ban on sales of biodiesel in the domestic transportation sector and non-availability of adequate indigenous feedstock.

Sandeep Chaturvedi

However he has hopes for the future and suggested, “There is a need to make more bio-fuel enabling policies. The new government is already taking several measures to liberate this sector. To begin with, bulk sales to consumers like Railways and defence may be opened up.”

However, in spite of the discouraging situation, there have been attempts by the private sector to produce bio-fuels on a commercially viable scale. An example of this is Gurgaon based Growdiesel Limited. The company was chosen as a bio-fuel consultant to the Indian Railways through a two stage global bidding process.

It has established five pilot biodiesel manufacturing projects and a commercial biodiesel production unit for a large listed company. Atul Saxena, Managing Director, Growdiesel Limited, says, “Since then, Growdiesel has been distributing high yielding Jatropha species to farmers. The yield per plant is more than five kgs within five years. The oil percentage in such species is more than 33%. Growdiesel uses a catalyst free technology for bio-diesel production which does not cause saponification even if moisture is present in the feed-stock, unlike other biodiesel processing technologies.”

Growdiesel has discovered 30 high yielding Jatropha species. They were submitted to Ministry of Agriculture & IC codes were allocated to them in the year 2005. These Jatropha species can grow first crop of Jatropha within the first year of plantation.

Atul Saxena

Growdiesel’s main biodiesel product is Rogwell (Renewable Oil and Gas Well). Rogwell uses specialty bio/reactors and bio/catalyst to reduce the processing time for biodiesel to a few minutes. It can covert a wide range of organic matter to fuel: dry/wet biomass, energy crops like grasses, Jatropha leaves, municipal organic waste, solid waste, biological waste oils, used cooking oil, sewage sludge, plastics, rubber and e-waste. The renewable crude oil obtained can be used to produce Green Diesel, Green Jet Fuel, Green Petrol & Green LPG”.

Another potential source of biodiesel which could be explored is microalgae. A. K. Bajhaiya, M.R. Suseela and others from the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, in a 2010 paper, “Algal Biodiesel: the next generation bio-fuel for India” published in the Asian Journal of Experimental Biology, say that unlike other oil crops, algal biomass can be doubled within a time as short as 3-4 hours. Therefore they can produce much more oil per acre than other plants used for biodiesel. E.g. while Jatropha gives on an average 788 litres /acre and palm oil gives 2403 litres /acre, microalgae yield about 19,000-57,000 litres / acre. Thus, an important concern in producing biodiesel, namely the need to bring huge quantities of scarce land under Jatropha cultivation, could be solved if the technology for production of algal biodiesel is perfected and if the economics is worked out. It has been estimated that less than 2-3 percent of total Indian cropping land is sufficient to produce enough biodiesel to replace all conventional diesel currently used in country. Another advantage is that oil from algae starts to become available after just 2-3 days, whereas Jatropha takes 3-4 years to give enough yields for commercial production. Finally, different species of micro-algae can be easily grown in India’s tropical climate, giving the country a natural benefit over other countries for the production of algal biodiesel.

Production of biodiesel from microalgae on a commercial scale may become possible in the near future with advancements and improvements in photobioreactor engineering. The new Union government is keen on reviving the Bio-fuel programme. According to Dr. Vasanta Thakur, Under-Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energies, “The Government is in the process of relooking into the Jatropha plantation programme. Production of bioethanol from biomass and algae is being seriously pursued and once this research reaches a level of commercial deployment, we can expect to see new results in bioethanol production. The government is also supporting extensive research for development of technologies for production of ethanol from lingo-cellulosic/biomass feed stock and sweet sorghum.”

– Rajmohan Kurup