Pakistan launches study of biomass residues and conversion technologies
To diversify its energy basket and lessen dependency on costly imported fuels, Pakistan's national Planning Commission has approved a research project worth 295 million rupiah (€3.6/US$4.8 million) to explore new sources of biofuels.
Besides determining key parameters about energy crops and bioconversion technologies, the public-private project, part of the Energy Security Action Plan, would also work on the production of ethanol and methane gas from lingocellulosic biomass over the next three years. Pakistan has abundant sources of biomass in the form of agricultural residues such as wheat straw, rice straw, cotton sticks, bagasse, corn stover, corn cobs and various other crops.
According to an FAO study, the country has a total agricultural residue base of around 84 million tons of biomass (field based and processing based), not taking into account residues from forestry (see table, click to enlarge). Taking a rough average of 15GJ of energy per air dry ton, the total amount of energy contained in this resource is around 1.26 Exajoules or 206 million barrels of oil equivalent energy. If all this biomass were to be collected and converted using current bioconversion technologies (with a total efficiency of around 20%), Pakistan could generate around 252 Petajoules of clean and renewable energy each year (for more info on residue-to-product ratios of different residue streams and their energy content, see earlier post).
In short, Pakistan's agriculture generates a lot of energy that is currently not used for the production of biofuels and bioenergy; most of it is burned in the open air, resulting in CO2 emissions, or left to waste. Looking at the crop residues as a renewable and green energy source with a market value is set to increase the profitability of Pakistan's farming sector. But to make such a paradigm shift a reality, a lot of work remains to be done, as stated in the project file, which lists the research objectives:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: biogas :: Pakistan ::
The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet has meanwhile approved E10 fuel (90 per cent gasoline and 10 per cent ethanol) on an experimental basis in the cities of Islamabad and Karachi a few months ago. Several sugar mills are already producing ethanol from molasses.
Biogas and CNG
The country is also looking specifically into biogas technologies: millions of small-scale plants have been installed in India, China and other countries in the region like Nepal, and Sri Lanka, but Pakistan, which could produce more than one billion gallons of ethanol annually from molasses, would also develop a process from laboratory to pilot-scale for the conversion of this resource into biogas.
The use of biogas is helpful in improving the quality of household life further by providing a clean burning gas that can replace firewood. It can also be utilised in internal combustion engines for water pumping, small industries like floor mills, saw mills, oil mills and in CNG-capable cars.
Pakistan is an example of how government policies can create a new car fleet and fuel paradigm in a very short time: in less than 2 years time the country has replaced 15% of its entire car fleet with CNG-capable cars (15% of a volume that has been growing very rapidly - making the achievement even more noteworthy). In absolute numbers: it has hit the 1 million mark. Vehicle conversions to CNG are clipping along at the rate of more than 40,000 per month. And the country now has 930 CNG stations operational with another 200 under construction (earlier post).
More information:
Pakistan Government: Home Planning Commission.
Daily Times: Bio-energy production: Govt plans to use biomass plants - March 24, 2007.
FAO, Auke Koopmans and Jaap Koppejan: "Agricultural and forest residues - generation, utilization and availability" [*.pdf], Paper presented at the Regional Consultation on Modern Applications of Biomass Energy, 6-10 January 1997, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, FAO, 1998, - see Annex II.
Besides determining key parameters about energy crops and bioconversion technologies, the public-private project, part of the Energy Security Action Plan, would also work on the production of ethanol and methane gas from lingocellulosic biomass over the next three years. Pakistan has abundant sources of biomass in the form of agricultural residues such as wheat straw, rice straw, cotton sticks, bagasse, corn stover, corn cobs and various other crops.
According to an FAO study, the country has a total agricultural residue base of around 84 million tons of biomass (field based and processing based), not taking into account residues from forestry (see table, click to enlarge). Taking a rough average of 15GJ of energy per air dry ton, the total amount of energy contained in this resource is around 1.26 Exajoules or 206 million barrels of oil equivalent energy. If all this biomass were to be collected and converted using current bioconversion technologies (with a total efficiency of around 20%), Pakistan could generate around 252 Petajoules of clean and renewable energy each year (for more info on residue-to-product ratios of different residue streams and their energy content, see earlier post).
In short, Pakistan's agriculture generates a lot of energy that is currently not used for the production of biofuels and bioenergy; most of it is burned in the open air, resulting in CO2 emissions, or left to waste. Looking at the crop residues as a renewable and green energy source with a market value is set to increase the profitability of Pakistan's farming sector. But to make such a paradigm shift a reality, a lot of work remains to be done, as stated in the project file, which lists the research objectives:
- production of thermostable and high specific activity celluloses at a minimum cost
- pretreatment of plant biomass including kallar grass, bagasse, corn cobs for saccharification by enzymes
- utilization of sugar in fermentation process to produce alcohol by action of improved yeasts
- development of microbial consortia for economic conversion of the pentose rich residual matter to produce methane gas
- undertaking study the possibility of using the nitrogen-rich residual mater obtained from methanogenesis as a fertilizer
- scaling up the processes of pretreatment, enzyme production, saccharification, alcohol fermentation and methanogenic fermentation for ultimate large scale operation;
- development of feasibility for large-scale application on the basis of the results obtained from implementation of this project for perspective entrepreneurs
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: biogas :: Pakistan ::
The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet has meanwhile approved E10 fuel (90 per cent gasoline and 10 per cent ethanol) on an experimental basis in the cities of Islamabad and Karachi a few months ago. Several sugar mills are already producing ethanol from molasses.
Biogas and CNG
The country is also looking specifically into biogas technologies: millions of small-scale plants have been installed in India, China and other countries in the region like Nepal, and Sri Lanka, but Pakistan, which could produce more than one billion gallons of ethanol annually from molasses, would also develop a process from laboratory to pilot-scale for the conversion of this resource into biogas.
The use of biogas is helpful in improving the quality of household life further by providing a clean burning gas that can replace firewood. It can also be utilised in internal combustion engines for water pumping, small industries like floor mills, saw mills, oil mills and in CNG-capable cars.
Pakistan is an example of how government policies can create a new car fleet and fuel paradigm in a very short time: in less than 2 years time the country has replaced 15% of its entire car fleet with CNG-capable cars (15% of a volume that has been growing very rapidly - making the achievement even more noteworthy). In absolute numbers: it has hit the 1 million mark. Vehicle conversions to CNG are clipping along at the rate of more than 40,000 per month. And the country now has 930 CNG stations operational with another 200 under construction (earlier post).
More information:
Pakistan Government: Home Planning Commission.
Daily Times: Bio-energy production: Govt plans to use biomass plants - March 24, 2007.
FAO, Auke Koopmans and Jaap Koppejan: "Agricultural and forest residues - generation, utilization and availability" [*.pdf], Paper presented at the Regional Consultation on Modern Applications of Biomass Energy, 6-10 January 1997, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, FAO, 1998, - see Annex II.
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