India is poised to be a 5-trillion dollar economy by 2025, and the mobility sector will have a huge role to play in driving this growth. To address the growing energy demands of this sector, while at the same time also achieving reduction in imports and tackling decarbonization in the future energy basket for the transportation sector, the Indian Government launched the aspirational Sustainable Alternative towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) scheme in 2018. The Government, under the SATAT scheme, envisages setting up 5,000 Compressed Biogas (CBG) plants by 2025 with a production target of 15 MMT, enough to reduce the country’s CNG bill by 40 per cent. The impetus to fuel progress is important and energy that is clean and renewable is hence the need of the hour for India.
India, among other countries, has been promoting ‘Waste-to-Energy’ projects using bio-methanation since 1982, which was largely limited to domestic use. More recently, Compressed Biogas (CBG), which is over 90% methane, became a valuable component of India’s future green energy mix, considering its high calorific value which makes it an effective fuel for the transportation industry, and the applicability to be fed into the national gas grid for large scale deployment can also help cut down on the natural gas imports, thus reducing the import bills for the country.
Two elements have played a vital role in the development of biomethane as an important constituent of the energy mix in the developed economies: strong policy backing and technological innovation. Despite the fact that Indian policymakers are actively promoting the Compressed Biogas ecosystem in order to attract investors and entrepreneurs, technological innovation is vital to the country’s next stage of development, giving it the much-needed impetus. Global technology organizations with advanced and innovative technologies can play a critical role in assisting India’s attempts to attain biogas-led energy self-sufficiency.
Countries such as Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland are encouraging the use of biogas through supporting regulatory frameworks, education programmes, and technological availability. Biogas is mostly injected into local natural gas systems and used for power generation in European countries. Grid injection is the most frequent method in European countries, followed by biogas fuelled vehicles.
Extensive upgradation and purification treatment that removes contaminants is necessary before biogas can be injected into the national gas grid or employed as a biofuel for the transportation sector. Biogas cleaning is the process of eliminating pollutants from the raw biogas, and biogas purification is the process of enriching methane content, to increase the calorific value
Extraction of pure biogas is significantly easier and faster using newer technologies such as Membrane Technology SEPURAN® Green hollow fiber polymeric membranes for biogas purification and separation have received huge interest over the last few years globally. There are more than 500 references of CBG plants deploying SEPURAN® Green membrane technology for biogas purification worldwide. Due to their reasonable cost, high selectivity, and easily engineered modules, they have been proven to be ideal for wide-scale applications. Given that membrane technology assures little waste, maximum energy efficiency, and is environmentally beneficial due to the lack of chemical use and water waste generated, while providing a very high purity and recovery of methane (CH4), is noteworthy. The biogas gets processed in a three step process, which separates the methane (CH4) concentration and ensures an output of purity ~99% methane. The technology is especially significant for CBG plant investors since it has the best price-performance ratio of any biogas purifying technology and is simple to scale up.
The newer technologies can be the drivers of change in the patterns of production of biogas in India. If India has to succeed in the biomethane journey, the awareness, deployment and hence investment in newer technologies has to increase. The government initiatives together with educational promotion of manufacture of CBG plants, and use of latest technologies for extraction of biomethane can be the perfect driver to the SATAT initiative and provide a much needed boost to the biogas story in India.
Vinod Paremal is the Regional President for Evonik India Subcontinent.