Oil and Gas

Biography

Biography: Ravindra Kumar

Abstract

Government of India in 2009 mandated a 10% ethanol blending target in gasoline across 20 states and 4 union territories and has further proposed to replace fossil based gasoline and diesel by using 20% biofuels by 2017. Due to limited supply of molasses, the 10% blending target could not be met and therefore, Indian government reduced mandatory blending to 5% ethanol in gasoline. Indian government and industry is focusing on implementing an ethanol blending programme (EBP) for part replacement of fossil derived gasoline and reduction of emissions. However, the positive impact of biofuels depends on emissions released and the energy consumed during the process for their production. LCA of ethanol, based on molasses, with a focus on GHG emissions and energy balance has been conducted in different countries like Brazil, Australia, Thailand, Mexico, Argentina and Nepal but, the conclusions derived from these studies are not comparable due to a huge disparity in the design of system boundaries, fertilization, irrigation, harvesting and application of different methods for allocation. This kind of study will throw a light on the environmental benefits of the fuel ethanol programme in India. This is the first study carried out in India, wherein, the comparison of LCA is done in two distinct parts of the country. To handle the impact and credit of co-products, allocation is applied based on mass, energy and the market price of the product and co-products. India’s biofuel programme relies on the ethanol from molasses for blending in gasoline. Therefore, quantification of GHG emissions and the energy consumed during the process of ethanol production is desirable to help policy makers to take meaningful decisions. In order to establish the environmental impact of the biofuels, life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted for 1 ton of fuel grade ethanol in the northern region (NR) and western region (WR) of India. Four different allocation approaches, without any allocation (WA), mass allocation (MA), energy allocation (EA) and market price allocation (MPA) are used to distribute emissions and energy consumption between product and co-products. GHG emissions reduction with respect to gasoline ranged from -262.7% to 75.9% in the NR and -225.6% to 75.8% in WR. Similarly, the net energy ratio (NER) also varies with different allocation approaches and ranged from 0.38 to 3.39 in the NR and 0.48 to 4.23 in WR. Using MA approach, maximum GHG emissions reduction of 75.9% and 75.8% and NER of 3.39 and 4.23 in NR and WR respectively indicates the environment friendly and surplus net energy benefits of ethanol. It is observed that MA and EA approaches give more acceptable and real life results. Details of the results will be discussed in the conference.