The Hindu 02.01.2014
Corporation finally gets to tap gas from biogas plant
On Tuesday, after a long wait the Coimbatore Corporation
finally began tapping gas from the biomethanation plant near the Amma
Canteen in Saravanampatty.
Mayor S.M. Velusamy
inaugurated the facility at the budget canteen in the presence of
Commissioner G. Latha, Deputy Commissioner S. Sivarasu, North Zone
Chairman P. Rajkumar and a few others.
The members of
the self-help group managing the canteen kitchen will use the gas,
generated from decaying food and vegetable waste, to cook breakfast and
lunch.
According to sources, the Corporation
supplying the gas would help it save on three-fourth of a commercial LPG
cylinder on a daily basis. The Corporation supplies an LPG cylinder a
day and that costs Rs. 1,000.
The women members at
the kitchen cook 1,200 idlis a day for breakfast and 300 plates of
sambar rice and as many plates of curd rice.
The
sources said that the civic body would at present be able to save on
three-fourth of a cylinder by using the biogas. In about two months, it
would be able to save on a cylinder as the volume of gas generated would
increase.
The Corporation had built the biogas plant
at Rs. 10 lakh as part of the project to rely more on green fuel. The
plant that used 500 kg food and vegetable waste a day had the capacity
to generate 25 cubic metre gas a day.
It has three
chambers – an inlet tank, a digester tank and an outlet tank, from where
the gas is tapped. It takes 35 – 40 days for the gas to be generated.
Once the gas was generated, the process would continue, without any
human intervention, said Selvaraj of Nirmal Biogen Technology, the
company that had constructed the plant.
The
Corporation sources said that the civic body was using the
biomethanation technology to fire a community kitchen in Kamaraj Nagar
and a crematorium in the city.
