Use of algae and methanol for rapid carbon recycling is gaining popularity among power producers.
As glaciers and rivers threaten to disappear, Indian coal-based power plants may have to look at algae and methanol for rapid carbon recycling.
National Thermal Power Corporation, the largest coal-based power producer in the country, is growing marine algae near its coal-based power plant at Simhadri. The organism will feed on the huge columns of carbon dioxide coming out of the plant and turn it into a green fuel that can run cars and buses.
Marine algae are the newest warriors in the battle with carbon emissions, which are melting glaciers. The algae are being deployed especially in coal-based power plants to recycle carbon into oil.
NTPC Chairman and Managing Director RS Sharma recently informed an industry gathering on clean coal technologies about this green carbon sink the company is creating. NTPC opted for algae, preferring it to carbon capture and storage, another method of capturing carbon and injecting it into geological sub-terrains. Sharma calls CCS more expensive and risky and rules it out as a solution for the world. He says power bills in a CCS-installed plant go up by 60-90 per cent.
Algae, on the other hand, not only yields a bio-fuel but also nullifies carbon, which is threatening to change global climate.
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Algae as carbon sink is already ranked higher than jathropha and other oil seeds as the fastest and biggest biofuel source that can negate the harm caused by carbon. But two million tonnes of algae are needed to eat one million tonnes of CO2. Hence, production is a concern.
The good thing about it is that its yield per acre is higher than that of any oil seed. For instance, if it is 48 gallon per acre per year for soya, 113 for peanuts, 124 for rapeseed, 287 for coconut 635 for palmoil, then it is 15,000 for algae. That it can grow in salt water, in deserts, in waste water, makes it all the more attractive.
Last week, the prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, asked NTPC to look at another green fuel, methanol, that can make coal-based power plants greener and somewhat environmentally sustainable. He asked it to prepare a project paper on the subject. It would add to India’s ammunition against global attacks on the CO2 fumes that its coal-based plants are adding to the atmosphere.
The anxiety to get things moving has increased as global talks for a climate agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change move towards conclusion in December this year. India is under pressure to tell the world what it is doing about its coal-based power plants, apart from increasing their number. Installed power capacity is slated to be about 207,000 Mw by 2012, with 4,7000 Mw coming from coal-based plants.
In the US, said Saran, 100 to 150 power plants based on coal had been cancelled or denied licences in the last two years.
Environment activists and researchers are already forecasting doomsday as close as 2035 for the Himalayan glaciers and the Ganga.
At the first anniversary of The Climate Project, a non-profit group creating awareness on climate change among school teachers and children, industrialist and trustee Kamal Meatle was already mourning the dying Ganga. Carbon emissions would see the river dead by 2035 and any action must start now, he said. Maybe, it’s time for the algae to conquer the Himalayas.