Conservation of fossil fuels: Emerging renewable sources

Conservation of fossil fuels :
Biodiesel, an emerging renewable source.

-------- Leena Mehendale
Principle Secretary, GAD,
Maharashtra
updated on 15/7/08
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.