Book Description

India’s demand for oil and gas has been increasing significantly in recent years boosted by its rapid economic growth. About 90% of the commercially produced energy in the world is from the oil, coal and gas, which are fossil fuels. India is one of the countries, with high usage of traditional fuels like coal, petroleum etc. About 85 per cent of the nation’s demand for oil products is being imported, So the foreign exchange reserved is being spent in large amounts on these imports and this is fatal to the nation’s financial progress and stable development. Domestically, there are limitations for the use of solar energy and wind energy as alternatives for petroleum products. In this regard, biofuels are a ray of hope to reduce the quantity of fuel import by using them as alternatives for traditional fuels like petroleum. India’s crude oil reserves are at 759.59 million tonnes and gas reserves at 1330.26 Billion Cubic Mt (BCM). At the present rate of use, India’s crude oil reserves are not going to last beyond 25 years. India’s crude oil import dependency was at 76% in the year 2011-2012. During the year 2013-14 the import of crude oil was 189.23 MT at 167.6 billion dollars.We import 61% of our need from from Middle East, 17% from Latin America, 16% from Africa (Indian Petroleum and natural gas Statistics, 2013-14).India is the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world with about 2011 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2014. The carbon dioxide is the cause of 60% of the global warming and automobile sector is the major emitter of the carbon dioxide, which can be controlled by switching over to the liquid bio-fuels.Bio diesel can also be produced from edible oil seed crops such as sunflower, groundnut, etc. However, since these are used as food, it will pose a danger to food security. Production of Bio-diesel from Non-edible oilseeds like Jatropha (Jatropha curcas), Pongamia (Pongamia pinnata) , simarouba glauca and Neem (Azadirachta indica) contributes to economic growth through wasteland utilization, employment generation, entrepreneurship development, increasing share of organic manure in agriculture (Poornima.N.N., 2008).Biodiesel: It is methyl ester, formed by the Transesterification of the oil with methanol in the presence of catalyst (NAOH/KOH) to yield methyl esters, glycerol and oilcake.Transesterification: It is the process of converting the try glycerides of the oils into Methyl esters and oilcake.For 100 kg of seed, Cost of Biodiesel production is Rs.2364, recovery from byproducts is Rs.1485 and the price is Rs.43.95 per liter of Bio diesel for Pongamia (Pongamia pinnata).Among the Biofuel Plants, Pongamia ha more economic advantage in biodiesel oil production as its saves Rs.13.94 per liter of bio diesel over the Diesel as worked out based on biofuel unit data , UAS(B).One of the greatest advantages associated with biofuels is Low Establishment Cost , nearly zero maintaince cost and making use of marginal lands.And one of the main driving forces behind worldwide biofuel uptake are their alleged reduced CO2 emissions, and hence their potential to help minimise climate change. In addition to reduced GHG emissions, biofuels also have the potential to reduce emissions of key toxic substances usually associated with standard fuels and their impact on employment opportunities and the environment is Positive. Because of the problem of food insecurity edible crop can not be used for bio fuel production.