Emergence of a new fuel

Emergence of a New fuel

Though biomass has been burnt for centuries in villages and areas around farms, the fuel has not seen any significant use in large scale industry until now. Biomass Briquettes or White Coal in the local lingo has brought biomass burning to the most sophisticated of manufacturing industries around the country.


The Use of Biomass Briquettes

From pharmaceutical units in Gujarat to Tea Factories in Tamil Nadu are now using biomass briquettes in their boilers to generate steam for various applications. Steam is generated in boilers, by heating water. This was earlier done through, burning coal or Furnace oil to generate the heat to boil water. Through subtle modifications to the boiler, it is easy to start burning biomass briquettes. There are now multiple agencies who help industries convert their boilers to burn briquettes. Yajna biofuels is one such company which has helped large industries convert their boilers.

Briquettes , though denser than loose biomass, do occupy space and are generally considered a bulky fuel by users. However, the use of briquettes brings alongsavings in fuel cost and environmental cost.

Advantages

To most industries that are away from coal sources, local agro-waste could mean significant saving.
Briquettes are eligible for CERs which are tradeable on the CME.
Relief from enviromental agencies.
No Sulphur content means lower risk of contaminating edible products - food, pharmaceuticals

Current Status and Availability


Biomass briquetting units are now all over the country, but mostly in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. The MNRE (Ministry of New and Reneweable Energy in India) Bio Energy India Magazine article says "At present more than 60% of the briquetting plants are located in the states of Gujarat, Punjab and Tamil Nadu." Units from Gujarat and Rajasthan are catering to North India as well as central India.

Potential users can easily source briquettes from a slew of manufacturers based in/ out of their state.
Briquette manufacturing capacity is inching higher with each passing day and the user base too has grown manifold in the last few years. The coming few years will see more users switching from the traditional fossil fuels to Biomass Briquettes, because of cost factor. With global pollution norms getting tightened this industry should only see higher demand in the coming years.

Government Policy

Certain states have income tax exemption on briquetting units for 5 years. Although such policy incentivises new briquetting units to come up, the governemnt also needs to increase the user base by incentivising consumers (large industries) to use renewable fuel.
Once incentivised larger manufacturers will create an atmosphere of switching to bio fuels. However we can only wait for the good to happen.

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