Biogas: A Sustainable and Potential Fuel for Transport Application

Abstract

Energy is an essential ingredient for economic growth, social development, human welfare and improving the standards of living. This growing consumption of energy has resulted in increased dependence on fossil fuels, which is causing environmental problems. Depletion of fossil fuels, energy security and large emission of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is a matter of great concern today. Diesel and petrol are the major transport fuels in India and each year billions of money are being expended for their import. Biogas can play a key role in transformation and dependency with a large potential in India (approximately 48, 383 million m3 biogas annually), having possibilities to replace and therefore reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for transportation sector. Based on the Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Statistics 2011–2012 data, the contribution of upgraded biogas in the transportation sector as a percentage of total petroleum fuels consumption for the year 2011–2012 is approximately 86.8% if used to replace transport fuel which is quite encouraging. A 10 Nm3/h capacity fully automated biogas purification and bottling plant with improved design parameters has been designed, fabricated and implemented at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) campus. The enriched and bottled biogas has been regularly fuelled to a Wagon R car (from last three years), and to analyse the performance of it, mass emissions testing has been performed at ICAT (International Centre for Automotive Testing). Results of mass emissions, i.e., nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC) and particulate matter(PM) were complying with Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) norms. In principal, biomethane can be used for exactly the same applications as natural gas, if the final composition is in line with the different natural gas qualities on the market.upgradation, Biogas for vehicular application