The government of India has accepted a proposal by H2e Power System, a Pune-based company, and the National Federation of Co-operative Sugar Factories to put up a few pilot plants that can produce sustainable aviation fuel from the bagasse-derived electricity in sugar mills.
If this is taken to fruition, it will create a demand for solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) plants from the Indian sugar industry.
The Business Line newspaper reports that H2e Power's Siddharth Mayur and NFCSF's Managing Director, Prakash Naiknavare met the union power minister R K Singh recently and pitched the idea to him--and received encouraging response.
The report says that there are about 550 operational sugar plants in the country, most of which burn their bagasse in co-gen plants that produce electricity; the power is sold to utilities under power purchase agreements. The existing tariffs are around Rs 6 - 7 a kWhr, but most of these PPAs are nearing their terms and going foward, the tariffs will nosedive.
Against this backdrop, the pitch is that the electricity and the carbon dioxide from the co-gen plants could be used in SOEC devices to produce hydrogen and syn gas; the syn gas can be converted into aviation fuel using the Fisher-Tropsch process.
Naiknavare has told Business Line that unless this is done, sugar plants might need to close down the co-gen units.
The idea that has germinated is to get up 4-5 pilot plants in the state of Maharashtra. If they are successful, as they are expected to be, then "sky is the limit", according to Naiknavare.
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