The Hindu Business Line : The Indian experience

A few Indian companies have attempted to process bio-diesel in a small way and use it in their vehicles. The most prominent among them being DaimlerChrysler India (subsidiary of the German company) and Mahindra & Mahindra.

DaimlerChrysler AG and DaimlerChrysler India with their partners — Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) and the University of Hohenheim — have been working with bio-diesel processed from the seeds of the Jatropha plant. The project, which is in its second and final phase, has been partly financed by Deutsche Investitions and Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG).

Since 2004, the Jatropha Biodiesel project by DaimlerChrysler and its partners has generated public interest in alternative energy sources, particularly bio-diesel, and community-wide support, mainly because the Jatropha plant can grow on wasteland. The project also included field-tests with Mercedes-Benz cars powered by pure (unblended) bio-diesel across nine States in 2004. This was followed by cold weather, high altitude tests of the bio-diesel cars across Khardung La, the highest motorable road in the world, and across the Himalayan terrain in 2005. This was a significant road test, as bio-diesel is said to be unsuitable for use as automotive fuel in low temperatures. The inputs from these road tests paved the way for further improvements to characteristics of bio-diesel from Jatropha.

Tough Plant

Jatropha is a species of plant that occurs in the wild in many parts of India, and the oil extracted from its seeds has been found to be suitable for conversion into bio-diesel. Jatropha can grow on poor, degraded soils and is able to ensure a reasonable production of seeds with little input. It is not grazed by animals and is highly pest and disease resistant.

DaimlerChrysler has had a long history of developing alternative fuel vehicles, including cars that run on hydrogen and other non-traditional fuels. With the methanol-powered NECAR fuel-cell vehicles, the German company had presented passenger cars suited for bio-methanol refuelling. Bio-methanol can also be blended with conventional gasoline and refuelled to conventional internal combustion engines, to a certain extent without engine modifications being necessary. The same holds true for bio-diesel, for example, from Jatropha biomass. Blending would require no new refuelling infrastructure.

Recently, M&M also formally announced its emphasis on bio-diesel and unveiled the bio-diesel Scorpio and Bolero DI vehicles for 100 per cent real world usage trials. The Scorpio, with indigenously developed CRDE technology, is said to be the first Asian vehicle in its class to run on 100 per cent bio-diesel. M&M also unveiled a 5 per cent bio-diesel tractor along with its utility vehicles, another first in the country.

Mahindra & Mahindra has organised two projects as part of its bio-diesel programme, one in conjunction with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and the other with Indian Oil Corporation's R&D Centre and Lubrizol.

The vehicles are to be run in real world environment that will involve severe and demanding terrain including hot and cold weather operations at high altitudes. M&M has done extensive R&D work in the area of alternative propulsion technologies and also set up its own bio-diesel pilot plant in 2001.

S. Muralidhar

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