Economic utilisation of rice straw - an effort for preventing social hazard

Abstract

Plumes of smoke because of rice straw burning is common in Northern States of India. Thus there is a need to promote utilisation of rice straw for power generation and ethanol production. To achieve this, there is a need for a sustainable supply chain management of rice straw. Presently, there is only one 12 MW, 100% rice straw-based power plant in India being operated by M/s PBPL. The plant consumes one million tonnes of rice straw annually at 70% plant load factor.