Gireesh B Pradhan, secretary, ministry of new and renewable energy, was present when V K Jain, director, commercial, Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd, and Dr R R Sonde, executive vice-president, Thermax Ltd, signed the MoU in New Delhi. Dinesh Shahra, MD, Ruchi Soya commented, "This project will not only help us in utilisation of biomass at the Ruchi Soya crushing plant at Washim but also generate additional income for local community. Biomass, which is not useful as animal feed can be used in this power generation project."
The ministry of new and renewable energy with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Fund runs programme aimed at accelerating adoption of environmentally sustainable biomass power technologies by removing the barriers identified. The one MW fluidised bed biomass gasification plant to be set up by Ruchi Soya at its Washim unit in Maharashtra will act as a Model Investment Project. The plant will be executed by Pune-based Thermax on the technology acquired from the Energy Research Centre and Dahlman, the Netherlands. The proposed gasification system will have higher conversion efficiency (more than 95%) as compared to 80-85% of the existing gasification systems.
An advanced gas cleanup system will overcome the existing barriers such as non-availability of proven single module of gasifier and gas clean up unit of capacity one MW or above. It will generate operating data required for standardisation and act as input for determination of separate tariff and demonstration of tri-generation. This plant will also help in demonstrating biomass gasification technology for generation of grid quality power. The ministry of new and renewable energy, has a wide range of programmes for harnessing energy as well as grid interactive and off grid power from biomass which is renewable in nature and carbon-neutral.
