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.