Biofuel Plantations

Abstract

Today energy crisis is worldwide because conventional forms of energy supply and consumption are causing serious economical as well as environmental problems. In our country consumption of petroleum products is increasing day-by-day resulting in huge gap of demand and supply. India rank 6 th in the world in terms of energy demand accounting for 3.5 percent of world commercial energy demand in 2001. India currently imports about 70 percent of its petroleum needs by paying Rs.1, 27,000 crores every year. The demand target may be 120.4 m t for 2006-07. Our domestic production of crude oil and natural gas will remain around 33.97 m t during 2006-07.The huge gap between demand and supply of 86.43 m t may be met only by import or by producing biofuels. The current consumption of diesel in India is approximately 40 m t forming about 40% of the total petroleum product consumption. This is expected to reach 52.32 m t by 2006-07 growing at approximately 5.6 % per annum. Government of India has already introduced petrol blended with 5 percent ethanol for use in motor vehicles in 9 states. A committee constituted by Planning Commission for Development of Biofuels recommended replacing about 10 % of diesel with biodiesel by the end of year 2011-2012 (Singh, 2003). Biodiesel production was spread in 21 countries mainly in Europe, Malaysia and USA. The largest biodiesel plant currently in operation was in Rouen, France with a capacity of 120, 000 tonnes. France is currently the world largest producer of biodiesel using it in 50 percent blend with petrol and diesel. During the last few decades, researchers tried all the edible and non-edible vegetable oils in compression ignition and spark ignition engines for different utilities. Since India cannot afford the usage of edible vegetable oils as power source because of short supply, planners suggested the use of non-edible vegetable oils as alternative fuels like Pongamia, Jatropha, and Neem etc. As Indian nation consists of 40 % of wasteland, it is better to develop all these lands by growing non edible oil plants which not only gives the oil but also enriches the environment by adding the green forest cover for ecological balance. In India, rural areas, in general are facing steep power crisis during the last two decades. Farmers are unable to irrigate their lands because of interrupted and short-term power supply. Finally it is effecting the agriculture production very badly. In this context, it is better to use the available plants, which produce the non-edible oil seeds to cater the needs at rural level for self-sustainability. Though there are more than 300 different species of trees, which produce oil-bearing seeds, Pongamia and Jatropha are the drought resistant plants, which grow with limited water. These two plants suit for the Andhra Pradesh ecological zone as it consists of 60 % of dryland, which has enough potential to meet the fossil fuel demand at rural level. Hence these plants can well be utilized to produce the biodiesel at rural and industrial level. 201 All over the world, the trials on biodiesel blending with diesel and other oils are still continued. In Andhra Pradesh, Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) of Adilabad district has started a pilot project at Utnoor with the effort of SuTRA (Sustainable Transformation of Rural Areas). Here, the villagers collect the Pongamia seed from the nearby forest and extract the oil using expellers. The filtered oil is then used to run the generator (50 W) to supply the electricity to the 100 houses in a village. This project created hopes in villages regarding self-sustainability in producing power.