Mizoram to produce electricity through bamboos

Aizawl, July 28 (UNI) The Mizoram government has chalked out a blue-print on setting up environment friendly power stations that run on bamboos to help meet the new industrial energy needs.

The state would be the first in the country to use the 'green' power and would be one of the first places in the world to tap the energy potential of the fast big growing grass.

''Our unique power station will use bamboo and bamboo wastes to generate electricity,'' Zoram Energy Development Agency (ZEDA) project co-ordinator Benjamin L Tlumtea told UNI.

''This power project will not only be cost effective, but also highly eco-friendly,'' he added.

The proposed Rs 2.85 crore power project was designed by scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IIS), Bangalore and Ankur Scientific Energy Technologies Limited, the two consultancy, which has been working on turning bamboo into gas and then into electricity, he pointed out.

The power station will have 500KV capacity, which is purely based on one hundred per cent gas produced by using bamboo as feed stock, he said, adding the location of the station would likely be in Sairang, where government has proposed setting up many bamboo-based industries.

Mr Benjamin, who also did his scientific research in US, said the proposed 'Sairang' location would be very apt for the bamboo power station not only to supply the much needed power to the surrounding industrial units, but also the power station can use the industrial bamboo waste to generate electricity.

''The power generation formula from the bamboo is very simple because the harvested bamboos would be dried and processed for feed stock to produce gas,'' he explained.

Mr Benjamin said, while in plain areas rice husk and coconut shells would be used to extract power, ''in Mizoram it is one hundred per cent bamboo only,'' he said.

The project in-charge also underlined that more than half of the 85 million tons of bamboos produced by the country, the largest producer of bamboo in the world after China, come from North East states only.

Once the power station functions smoothly, we are confident that the commercial success of gasification of bamboo for generation of electricity would help us to solve the energy crisis faced by the region, especially Mizoram, and allow our experts to pursue such venture on a bigger sale, he said adding, we would propose more such project in the years to come, which would generate employment in the region.

According to the Planning Commission sources, among the North Eastern state, Mizoram stands first in bamboo cultivation area of more than 9000 sq km, followed by Assam with 8213 sq km, Arunachal Pradesh 4593 sq km, Manipur 3692 sq km, Meghalaya 3102 sq km, Tripura 939 sqkm and Nagaland 758 sq km.

UNI SNR BA PR DB1030