“what You Think is Not Always True”

I love the field of biotechnology. Therefore, wherever I go, wherever I see a problem, I try to apply the concepts of biotechnology to solve the problem. However, I was making a mistake. I realized this recently.

Recently, from my college I got chance to go to the field trip to study interaction of the people with their environment in terms of energy and to propose the solution to lessen the environmental impact of the energy demands.

The place was a village near Udaipur (Rajasthan, India). It lies on the outskirts of a wildlife sanctuary. Their lifestyle was very simple. They were welcoming in nature.

However, when I interviewed them, I found many fascinating things. Some of them were:

1) Most of them have no clue about Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).

2) One of them was using Solar Photovoltaic cells for lighting lamps.

3) Females would do the firewood collection work.

4) Although they have good amount of goats, the overall meat consumption is negligible.

The major pressure identified on the wildlife sanctuary was the cutting of forests for firewood. They will use the firewood both for cooking and for generating income.

I thought to introduce the concept of biogas plants to them. At least the cooking energy demands can be met by the biogas produced.

BIGGEST HITCH

The overall animal waste availability was not sufficient to supply the energy needs of the house for the year round.

COUNTER ATTACK

To solve this problem I thought to explore the other alternative biomass for running biogas. I found that the village has lot Jatropha plant and they all sell Jatropha seeds.

I thought of using the Jatropha seed cake for feeding biogas plants. In addition, I found an interesting paper, which said that Jatropha seed cake produce, more biogas than animal waste.

Image via Wikipedia

ANOTHER FAILURE

Again, I found that the supply of seed cake was sufficient to supply gas for only 10 days in a year.

FINAL ATTEMPT

After encountering two failures, I was bit discouraged but still I tried. I was left with only two other sources. One source was the agricultural waste and edible leaves and second source was the non-edible leaves. However, I could not the use the first source because it was used as animal feed.

Second could be used, but the due to water scarcity that cannot be used. Since, requirement of water was high.

My Conclusions

Although I was unsuccessful in proposing any biotechnological solution, I found that one of the main problems is water scarcity.

Secondly, people are very afraid of using gaseous fuels as they think that it burst.

However, the most interesting thing was that the cheapest fuel to provide cooking energy to village was not firewood or any other liquid or bio-fuel, but LPG. This finding came from the theoretical calculations done by my team.

Image via Wikipedia

Although lot of work need to be done for finding an apt solution for this village. One thing I have learnt that always go with an open mind to the field and be prepared for the unexpected.

For more articles related to biogas, refer:

1. Modified Biogas Digester: This biogas digester designing will make biogas very much commercially viable.
2. Biogas: Is It a Future?: Is it really good enough to solve our future problems?

For more articles related to development, refer:

1. Sustainable Development: Village: Find out how to make a village life sustainable or self-reliant.
2. How to Solve the Problem of Slums: A simple way to solve one of the toughest problems of the world.
3. Discriminated Vegans Development: Discrimination against vegans can severely affect different forms of their development. Find out different developments affected in this article.
4. Effect of Discrimination on Development: It shows the various kinds of development which are hindered if discrimination is there.
5. Modified Biogas Digester: This biogas digester designing will make biogas very much commercially viable.
6. Biotechnology: Hype or Truth?: Check out the reality of the latest booming scientific field called biotechnology.
7. 11 Facts About Public Policy: Real facts, which determine the public policy today.
8. Village Tourism: Advantages of village tourism are given.