[Stoves] News 2 November 2016: NYT: Farmers’ Unchecked Crop Burning Fuels India’s Air Pollution

Traveller miata98 at gmail.com
Wed Nov 2 23:50:12 CDT 2016


Anil:

I do remember that plant; met its promoter in a flight in Africa around . A
few years later there was a draft paper for Boiling Point recommending that
his PPA tariff be raised because rice husk was no longer free (and marketed
to brick kilns as India's construction boom was taking off.

I was skeptical. I agree that in a country like India, farmers will not pay
a cost to dispose of their crop wastes properly.

But I don't think power generation is the right use (there may be cheaper
alternatives), and certainly not for micro-grids. I think the much
ballyhoo'd Husk Power may have discovered that crop wastes have a market
and that mini-grid operators with exorbitant tariffs will have to be pushed
out by grid power. Policy gap stops investors from expanding power grids in
rural India
<http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/policy-gap-stops-investors-from-expanding-power-grids-in-rural-india/183909/>
(Financial
Express, 26 December 2015). A PV-biomass hybrid would have a better chance
if it was grid-connected.

Kiln operators, on the other hand, can be mandated to take the wastes at a
price and burn it under controlled conditions. This will raise the price of
bricks, but so be it. Better than power tariffs that will keep poor people
poor. (Maybe that's the idea.)

Also, look at cooking app - This Cooker Uses Rice Husks as a Cheap, Green
Fuel Source
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/alexis-belonio-explorer-moments-food-innovation/>,
National Geographic (19 October 2016). I think I have read about Belonio
before. No idea what the scale and acceleration rate are.

Nikhil



On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 12:14 AM, nari phaltan <nariphaltan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Nikhil,
>
> This has been going for almost 30-40 years and adds to the air
> pollution of Delhi. As usual in a corrupt society like India things
> are always done in a half-hearted manner. I believe a 10 MW rice husk
> power plant was installed in Punjab in late 1990s but I guess it
> stopped working after few years because of faulty and substandard
> machinery.
>
> Unless and until the farmers get money for their residues they will
> continue burning them to ready their fields for next planting. Using
> them to produce power is one way to get money to farmers, produce
> electricity and burn them cleanly.
>
> All the best.
>
> Anil
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