Pradhan inaugurates Indian Oil’s Biomethanation Plant

Faridabad: Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan inaugurated Indian Oil's (IOC) 5MTPD Biomethanation plant on Wednesday in Faridabad. Pradhan flagged off the first vehicle loaded with compressed Biogas, produced by the Biomethanation plant, for free supply to ISCKON for cooking mid-day meals for schools in Faridabad.

'Indian Oil's biomethanation plant will give the PSU an edge'

Addressing the press later, Pradhan said, "This technology is in line with the dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make 'waste to wealth.'" Appreciating the R&D-developed design and microbial technology, he observed that this will give a fillip to the speedy implementation of SATAT scheme and also help gain Indian Oil a leading business edge in this domain. Highly impressed by a solar cooking system (solar chulha), which has been co-developed at Indian Oil's R&D Centre and whose pilot study has already begun at Leh, the minister advised IOC to make it more attractive and cost-effective to provide energy justice to all.

What is biomethanation?

Biomethanation is an environment-friendly process for the conversion of organic waste such as food and vegetable waste, organic fraction of municipal solid waste and crop residue, to energy. Indian Oil R&D Centre has developed an efficient and economical two-stage anaerobic digestion process for the conversion of various types of organic wastes to valuable biogas energy.

What is special about Indian Oil's biogas?

Indian Oil's Biomethane technology is such that the biogas produced has a higher methane content (more than 80 percent) as opposed 50-60 percent yielded by conventional processes, an official release said. This leads to better heating value and combustion efficiency. "IOC's biogas has low hydraulic retention time of 7-10 days against 21-50 days in the conventional process. The yield of Biogas due to in situ conversion of CO2 to Methane is higher," the release said.

CSR initiative

Indian Oil's R&D Centre has set up a 5 MTPD demonstration plant at Faridabad (adjoining to the existing R&D centre) based upon in-house technology for the conversion of organic waste/kitchen waste to compressed biogas (CBG). The plant has been set up by Indian Oil under its CSR initiatives wherein 250 kg/day CBG can be produced from organic waste for free-of-cost supply to ISKCON for cooking mid-day meal for government school children in Faridabad. Indian Oil has joined hands with the Municipal Corporation of Faridabad to supply properly segregated kitchen waste to the plant in required quantity, the release said.

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