Orissa is yet to tap the potential to produce substantial quantity of power using the waste heat of large number of rice mills operating in the state.
The state has 7364 rice mills, with 552 of them using modern machineries to produce rice from paddy. But only six of them have biomass based gasifiers or co-generation facility to generate power.
The six units are Nayagarh Rice Mills Private Ltd (Sarankul, Nayagarh), Diamond Rice (Sarankul, Nayagarh), Sabitri Rice Mills (Karanjia, Mayurbhanj), Maa Durga Rice Processing and Export Private Ltd (Katsahi, Cuttack), Jailaxmi agro foods (Cuttack) and Lath Rice Products (Bangarh).
While Nayagarh Rice Mills has co-generation system (a system where one can generate power from the steam which is used in the process), Diamond Rice and Sabitri Rice Mills are using gasification system for generation of power.
This was stated by Dr D K Khare, director, Union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE), during a one day seminar on promotion of biomass gasifiers and co-generation projects at rice mills in Orissa. Speaking on the inaugural session, Khare said, Orissa produces 6.832 million tonne of paddy every year. Since the state produces 1.7 million tonne husk, about 100 Mw power can be produced using 25 percent of this husk.
Similarly, the state produces about 2.36 millon tonne of rice straw with a power generation potential of 150 Mw.
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However, due to lack of awareness about the technology, difficulties in getting Central financial assistance, sizing of appropriate capacity of gasifiers or co-generation system, arranging finance for small size projects, this potential has not been converted into reality.
He said, the cost of generation in the gasifier system with Duel Fuel engines is about Rs 1 crore per Mw with payback period of about 12 months. Similarly, the cost of co-generation is about Rs.3.5 crore per Mw with payback period of about 4-5 years. In this backdrop, the gasifier or cogeneration systems can save about 50-100 million litres diesel annually in about 5000 small rice mills in Orissa.
Deepak Gupta, secretary, MNRE said, there is acute shortage of electricity in the country and the demand for electricity is growing at a faster pace. While 85 percent of our oil need is met from imports, we are unable to import adequate quantity of coal required for power generation, he added.
Since the country can’t continualxly depend on oil to meet energy requirement and 40 percent of the villages remain without power, there is a need to produce clean power.
In this context, 20 percent of the rice mills can adopt co-generation or biomass gasifiers to produce power over next 3-4 months. The MNRE would provide in principle approval within 10 days for setting up these projects after online registration.
S P Thakur, secretary, science and technology department of Orissa government, said, the state is set to get its first 20 Mw biomass based power in June-July this year. Though the state government has cleared a number of biomass projects, no rice miller has come with proposals in this regard. If they give proposals to the state government, it would be approved within 10 days. Similarly, if the rice millers come in a group and form a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for setting up biomass based power plant, they would be provided free land as per the provisions of industrial policy of the state, director of industries, Hemant Sharma said.