LOW COST BIOGAS UPGRADATION AND BOTTLING SYSTEM FOR USE IN VEHICLES DEVELOPED AT IIT-DELHI

Virendra Kumar Vijay Associate Professor

Rimika Kapoor Research Scholar

Centre for Rural Development and Technology Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110 016, India Email: vkvijay@rdat.iitd.ernet.in India has a huge population of humans and cattle. One fifth of the population of earth as well as millions of cattle reside in India. So bio-logical waste is available in abundance. Unfortunately no conscientious effort, except the traditional use of animal waste as manure, has been made to some extent. Biogas is an important alternative source of energy and suited to small scale off grid applications in rural and remote areas in India. Main sources of Biogas production are animal dung, human excreta, poultry waste, kitchen & mandi waste, agriculture waste, de-oiled seed cake, municipal solid and liquid waste, waste water and various industrial waste such as pulp and paper mill waste, sugar mill waste, leather industry waste etc. The annual biogas generation potential in India is about 17,340 million m3, which can support the installation of up to about 12 million family-size biogas plants. Raw biogas produced from digestion is roughly 60% methane and 35% CO2 with trace elements of H2S, and is not high quality enough if the owner was planning on selling this gas or using it as fuel gas for machinery. The corrosive nature of H2S alone is enough to destroy the internals of an expensive plant. The solution is the use of a biogas upgrading or purification process whereby contaminants in the raw biogas stream are absorbed or scrubbed, leaving around 90- 95% methane per unit volume of gas. There are four main methods of biogas upgrading, these include water scrubbing, pressure swing absorption, physical absorption and chemical treatment. The most prevalent method is water scrubbing where high pressure gas flows into a column where the carbon dioxide and other trace elements are scrubbed by cascading water running counter-flow to the gas. This arrangement can deliver 90 95 % methane. There is a lot of potential if biogas could be made viable as a transport vehicle fuel like CNG by compressing it and filling into cylinders after scrubbing and drying. This is done by removing its CO2, H2S and water vapour components. Using water scrubbing system at IIT Delhi, enrichment of biogas is made which gives methane content in biogas up to 90-95% and then the property of biogas is almost similar to CNG available in the commercial market. It is estimated that total Biogas production potential in India can replace 52 x 109 Litre/Year of petroleum fuel/annum. There is large scope of developing decentralized biogas refineries and setting up biogas enrichment and bottling system as commercially viable biogas filling stations in India. These will reduce CO2 and methane emission in the environment and help mitigating climate change. The developed technology in IIT Delhi for biogas enrichment and filling system has started working at many places in India. The paper deals with the technology details, cost economics and case studies in India on compressed and piped biogas as an alternate to petroleum fuels and its replication in other countries.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India, has initiated a new scheme, Biogas Fertilizer Programme(BGFP) for the development of projects on "demonstration of integrated technology-packages on medium-size biogas-fertilizer plants for generation, purification/enrichment, bottling and piped distribution of biogas towards harnessing Near potential of suitable biomass in Rural Areas through the involvement of entrepreneurs. In BGFP scheme, MNRE provides financial support upto 50% of the cost for such projects. Biogas Development Training Center (BDTC), IIT Delhi has been designated as lead BDTC for providing technical assistance and monitoring of such projects for obtaining feedback for further improvement in the techno commercial packages.