AgroGas is the solution of today’s issue of managing agro-residue: Atul Akolkar

During the conversation with Devdiscourse, Atul Akolkar, Vice President, Business Development of AgroGas extolled the initiation behind the making of Waste Management Series of Summit 2020. Many other things have been shared by him on the sidelines of Waste Management Series of Summits (WMSS) 2020 organized in New Delhi on January 30-31.

Atul Akolkar said that during the peak hours (across the world) when all the countries have the issue of wealth management added with waste management, the platform like WMSS 2020 is a perfect place to discuss how waste can be managed to create wealth.

While emphasizing on the activities, Atul Akolkar said that AgroGas is absolutely specialized in using disruptive technology. “After more than of 10 years of dedicated research, we have arrived at this technology. Our technology means second generation bioCNG. This is called second generation because we make bio CNG from lignocellulosic and hemicellulosic biomass of the plant,” he said.

“As we all are aware, in places like Punjab and Haryana, after harvesting when balance of trees are not useful to the farmers, they tend to set it on fire. The management of agro-residue is a severe concerning issue. Despite severe efforts from state and central government, we are not able to stop this practice. AgroGas is the solution of this problem,” Atul Akolkar continued.

While discussing the efficiency of biogas in comparison to the fossil or natural gas, Atul Akolkar cited that natural gas (CNG) emerges from the earth in addition with methane and other hydrocarbons like butane, propane etc. But when AgroGas makes bio-CNG from agri-waste, pure methane emerges with no presence of hydrocarbons. Thus, performance-wise, it is better than fossil CNG, he said.

“We use our indigenous technology. The beauty of AgroGas technology is that the production cost is very much, because in this process no chemicals, enzymes and catalysts are used. That’s why the whole business is very profitable beside being technically feasible,” Akolkar added.

He also shared a rough figure of requirement for setting up a bio-CNG plant. According to him, one requires around 3 acres of area with around INR 20 crores of investment for setting up the (5 tonnes per day) bio-CNG plant. “This investment can be easily recovered and will have simple payback of around 3 years time. This is very attractive for the investors,” he added.

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